Given mobile devices’ weak computational power, game programmers must learn to create games with simple graphics that are engaging and easy to play. Though seldom created for phones and tablets, puzzle games are a perfect fit. In recent years, the genre has gained a following and even won some acclaim. Games like Myst, The Seventh Guest and Portal all engage gamers with challenging puzzles and then reward them with story components upon task fulfillment. Few such games have been created for mobile devices, in part due to the difficulty of developing for devices with different operating systems. Android, WebIOS and Windows Phone all have different software development kits that produce a final product incompatible with operating systems other than what it was developed for. One promising solution is to use browser technology to deliver games since all devices are geared to interact with the Web through browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. The aim of this project was to build a puzzle game that can be run on any digital device. The project can be accessed without any plug-ins and was created by using web technologies such as JQuery, Touch Punch, local storage, and WebGL. JQuery allows drag and drop functionality and Touch Punch allows the JQuery functionality intended for a mouse to work on a touch interface. Local storage provides storage on a user’s device, as opposed to a server, and WebGL enables graphics processing on a user’s tablet or phone through web commands.

Hospitals are the largest and most complex organizations where health care is provided. Safe and effective patient care services in hospitals depend on the efficient decisions made by hospital executives. The main task of hospital executives is to ensure the hospital can provide high quality patient care and services. “Android Mobile Application For Hospital Executives” is an Android application used for displaying hospital performance metrics on a daily basis. This application allows hospital executives to review and monitor hospital operational data with ease of access and in a portable manner. Thus, reducing the effort of the hospital executives to perform their tasks.

At California State University San Bernardino, students can ordinarily register online and join waiting lists when a course is full. However, the system does not support waiting lists when a course has associated laboratory sections. This project addresses this problem.

In a big organization there are many events organized every day. To know about the events, we typically need to check an events page, rely on flyers or on distributed pamphlets or through word of mouth. To register for an event a user now a days typically does this online which involves inputting user details. At the event, the user either signs a sheet of paper or enters credentials in a web page loaded on a tablet or other electronic device. Typically, this is a time-consuming process with many redundancies like entering user details every time the user wants to register for a new event and re-entering the details at the event. This project designs a system that eliminates these redundancies and improves event management.

Modern main memory is primarily built using dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. As DRAM chip scales to higher density, there are mainly three problems that impede DRAM scalability and performance improvement. First, DRAM refresh overhead grows from negligible to severe, which limits DRAM scalability and causes performance degradation. Second, although memory capacity has increased dramatically in past decade, memory bandwidth has not kept pace with CPU performance scaling, which has led to the memory wall problem. Third, DRAM dissipates considerable power and has been reported to account for as much as 40% of the total system energy and this problem exacerbates as DRAM scales up. To address these problems, 1) we propose Rank-level Piggyback Caching (RPC) to alleviate DRAM refresh overhead by servicing memory requests and refresh operations in parallel; 2) we propose a high performance and bandwidth efficient approach, called SELF, to breaking the memory bandwidth wall by exploiting die-stacked DRAM as a part of memory; 3) we propose a cost-effective and energy-efficient architecture for hybrid memory systems composed of high bandwidth memory (HBM) and phase change memory (PCM), called Dual Role HBM (DR-HBM). In DR-HBM, hot pages are tracked at a cost-effective way and migrated to the HBM to improve performance, while cold pages are stored at the PCM to save energy.

Fast Block Matching (FBM) algorithms for video compression are well suited for acceleration using parallel data-path architectures on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). However, designing an efficient on-chip memory subsystem to provide the required throughput to this parallel data-path architecture is a complex problem. This thesis presents a memory architecture template that can be parameterized for a given FBM algorithm, number of parallel Processing Elements (PEs), and block size. The template can be parameterized with well known exploration techniques to design efficient on-chip memory subsystems. The memory subsystems are derived for two existing FBM algorithms and are implemented on a Xilinx Virtex 4 family of FPGAs. Results show that the derived memory subsystem in the best case supports up to 27 more parallel PEs than the three existing subsystems and processes integer pixels in a 1080p video sequence up to a rate of 73 frames per second. The speculative execution of an FBM algorithm for the same number of PEs increases the number of frames processed per second by 49%.

A critical requirement of any remote microgrid is its capability to control the balance between electric generation and load within the confines of the microgrid itself. The integration of significant amounts of “as available” renewable generation to any electric grid (macro or micro) makes it more difficult to maintain this balance and can result in large frequency deviations on a microgrid. Ancillary services provide the resources required to maintain the instantaneous and ongoing balance between generation and load. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) can provide regulating reserves, a type of ancillary service, by modulating active power for frequency control, referred to as load frequency control (LFC), to reduce frequency deviations caused by sudden changes in renewable generation. Historically, the most common methodology for reducing frequency disturbances exacerbated by wind plants with BESS systems is ramp rate control and more recently lead compensation. This thesis proposed a modified lead compensator for use in microgrid applications. A PSS®E microgrid model, based upon existing validated models, was developed to test the effectiveness of the LFC controllers used to dispatch the BESS as a regulating resource to allow increased wind energy penetration levels on remote microgrids. A model of the remote microgrid of the island of Maui, Hawaii was chosen as the basis for the designs. Daily wind power data from 2012 was classified and indexed on an hourly basis by severity of variation. The worst hour for power variation from the wind plants was identified from this indexing and used as the basis for simulating the LFC controllers. The results compared the effectiveness of droop, ramp rate, lead compensation, and modified lead compensation controllers in reducing the variability in the grid frequency caused by changes in wind power generation. An RMS of variation with respect to an average over different time windows was used as the comparison metric. The combined modified lead compensator with ramp rate control showed the best performance of the overall system behavior. / text

In recent years, the share of renewable energy sources (RESs) has been increasing in the electricity generation mix with a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are released from burning fossil fuels. Indeed, a large share of electricity from renewable resources is required to de-carbonize the electricity sector. With the evolution of smart grids and microgrids, effective and efficient penetration of renewable generation such as wind and solar can possibly be attained. However, the intermittent nature of wind and solar generation makes microgrid operation and planning a complex problem and there is a need for a flexible grid to cope with the variability and uncertainty in their generation profiles. This research focuses on the coordination of distributed energy resources, such as energy storage systems (ESSs) and demand response (DR) to present an efficient solution towards improving the flexibility of microgrids, and supporting high levels of renewables generation. The overall goal of this research is to examine the influence of coordinated operation of ESS and DR on microgrid operations in the presence of high penetration levels of renewable generation. Deterministic and stochastic short-term operational planning models are developed to analyze the effects of coordinating ESS and DR, vis-à-vis their independent operation, on microgrids with high renewable generation. Special focus is on operation costs, scheduling and dispatching of controllable distributed generators, and levels of renewable generation. A set of valid probabilistic scenarios is considered for the uncertainties of load, and intermittency in wind and solar generation sources. The numerical results considering a benchmark microgrid indicate that coordinated operation of ESS and DR is beneficial in terms of operation costs, vis-à-vis their independent presence in the microgrid, when there is sufficient renewable generation. The coordinated operation reduces the risk in scheduling and increases the flexibility of the microgrid in supporting high levels of renewable generation.

Energy storage devices are generally evaluated on two main requirements; power and energy. In supercapacitors these two performance criteria are altered by the capacitance, resistance and voltage. (For complete abstract open document)

Η διπλωματική αυτή εργασία έχει ως στόχο να δώσει στον αναγνώστη της μια σαφή εικόνα των μεθόδων αποθήκευσης ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας που υπάρχουν σήμερα, αναφέροντας εφαρμογές αυτών σε διάφορα Συστήματα Ηλεκτρικής Ενέργειας ανά τον κόσμο. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο γίνεται μια αναφορά στους λόγους που επιβάλουν την αποθήκευση ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας, παρουσιάζοντας εν συντομία όλες τις μεθόδους αποθήκευσης που θα αναλυθούν στα επόμενα κεφάλαια. Στο δεύτερο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζεται αρχικά η μέθοδος αποθήκευσης ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας με υπεραγώγημα πηνία και στη συνέχεια βλέπουμε τα αποτελέσματα εφαρμογής των συστημάτων αυτών τόσο σε επίπεδο εξομοίωσης όσο και σε πραγματικές περιπτώσεις. Στο τρίτο κεφάλαιο περιγράφεται η αποθήκευση ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας με μπαταρίες. Αφού αναφερθούν οι κατηγορίες τους και τα χαρακτηριστικά μεγέθη τους, γίνεται μοντελοποίηση των μπαταριών και στη συνέχεια περιγράφονται δυο πραγματικές περιπτώσεις εφαρμογής των συστημάτων αυτών αποθήκευσης στο δίκτυο της Αμερικής. Στο τέταρτο κεφάλαιο περιγράφονται τα συστήματα αποθήκευσης με στρεφόμενες μάζες. Αναφέρονται τα πλεονεκτήματα και μειονεκτήματά τους, καθώς και τα χαρακτηριστικά των συστημάτων αυτών. Τέλος περιγράφεται η εφαρμογή των συστημάτων αυτών στην ρύθμιση της συχνότητας του δικτύου. Το πέμπτο κεφάλαιο μελετάει τα συστήματα αντλησιοταμίευσης στην αποθήκευσης ενέργειας. Αφού γίνει μια αναφορά στην υδροδυναμική ενέργεια, τα φράγματα και τους υδροστρόβιλους, εξετάζεται η περίπτωση εφαρμογής ενός τέτοιου συστήματος στο αυτόνομο σύστημα ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας της Κρήτης. Στο έκτο κεφάλαιο μελετάται η χρήση των υπέρ-πυκνωτών στην αποθήκευση ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας. Υπολογίζεται η ισοδύναμη χωρητικότητα συστήματος υπέρ-πυκνωτών καθώς και η απόδοση φόρτισης και εκφόρτισής του. Στο έβδομο κεφάλαιο γίνεται περιγραφή των συστημάτων αποθήκευσης με συμπιεσμένο αέρα και αναφέρονται δυο πραγματικές εφαρμογές των μονάδων αυτών καθώς και εκτιμώμενα μελλοντικά σχέδια ανάπτυξης νέων τέτοιων μονάδων. Στο όγδοο κεφάλαιο γίνεται μια σύντομη αναφορά στην πιθανή μελλοντική χρήση των κυψέλων υδρογόνου για αποθήκευση ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας ενώ στο ένατο κεφαλαίο γίνεται μια σύντομη σύγκριση όλων των προαναφερόμενων διατάξεων αποθήκευσης βάση την ταχύτητα εκφόρτισής τους και βάση του κόστους εγκατάστασης ανά μονάδα παραγόμενης ενέργειας. Η διπλωματική εργασία κλείνει με ένα κεφάλαιο στο οποίο μελετάται η ενσωμάτωση των συστημάτων αποθήκευσης ενέργειας στους ελεγκτές FACTS στο επίπεδο μεταφοράς ηλεκτρικής ενέργειας και στις συσκευές CUSTOM POWER στο επίπεδο της διανομής. / -