The main topic of this project is to do an energy study of the Mariners’ Church, ‘Sjömanskyrkan’, placed in the Centralplan of Gävle, Sweden. This is an old building built in the late 1800’s by the evangelic-lutheran missionaries and nowadays is used to realize different cultural activities such as concerts, meetings, workshops…   Energy is one of the most important points in the actual society. The fact that common energy sources are being depleted and the use of these resources produces a lot of contaminants have brought some many international crisis and conflicts. A big use of oil fuels can influence the government behavior and condition its laws and regulations. Nowadays, the majority of the countries want to reduce their fossil energy sources dependency, e. g. Sweden designed an energy commission in 2005 to make a report on how these uses of petroleum, natural gas and ‘fossil raw materials’ can be reduced until 2020. This project wants to follow this direction, providing some energy savings through the investment and renewal of old public buildings.   The aim of this project is to know how much and in which way this building uses the energy, locating its strong and weak points, and point out some different energy efficiency measures to improve the situation.   First of all, an energy balance has been realized. In the part of the heat gains the total energy use is 274 MWh / year. On the other hand the energy losses give a quantity of 273 MWh / year. The differences between both are the losses by infiltration, 1MWh / year. Most of this energy is lost because of the transmission, about a 95% of the energy losses. The age of the building and its old materials are the main reason for this out of proportion percentage. That’s why the main efficiency measures are referred to this part.   After this first analysis, some efficiency measures have been carried out. The most important are referred to the structural elements like walls, windows, roof and floor. All of these procedures can save 45% of the energy losses. This is evidence that old buildings and this in particular, are really bad insulated and have a lot of heat leakages. Also some behavior recommendations are given, like maintenance works and lightning improvements.

Energy is an important factor that must be considered by multi-hop wireless mesh routing protocols because most sensors are powered by batteries with a limited capacity. We focus on the industry-standard RPL (Routing Protocol over Low-power and lossy networks) routing protocol that must find energy-efficient paths in low-power and lossy networks. However, the existing RPL objective functions route based on hop-count and ETX (expected transmission count) metrics alone, ignoring the energy cost of data transmission and reception. We address this issue in two ways. First, we design an objective function for RPL that finds paths that require, in expectation, the minimum amount of energy. Second, we design a probing mechanism which configures the transmission power of sensors to minimize energy consumption. The proposed approach is implemented and evaluated using simulations as well as on a small testbed with two Zolertial Z1 motes.

The legal reform process in South Africa has led to increasingly complex legislative requirements for new developments in the form of various authorization processes. Currently different organs of state, at different spheres of government exercise a range of powers and functions in respect of the approval of development applications. These authorisations typically relate to planning, water management, heritage resources, environmental management, air quality, etc. In order to improve the efficiency and alignment of authorisation processes there is a serious need to gain a better understanding of the interaction between the different authorisation processes as well as the challenges experienced. This research presents the results of a critical analysis of planning and environmental impact assessment (EIA) authorisation processes in the Mpumalanga Province and examines how authorisation processes are implemented and aligned, how efficient the processes are, why process inefficiencies occur and how the efficiency of processes can be improved. The outcome of the research suggests that there are three main success factors for efficiency, namely the legislative framework that provides for administrative and environmental justice, co-operative governance that provides the basis for good communication, and information and competence that injects expertise into the authorisation process. The so-called 'efficiency triangle' is conceptualised, which clearly illustrates the interaction between these success factors. / Thesis (M. Environmental Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

This thesis explored the opportunities to reduce energy demand and renewable energy feasibility at an off-grid science “community” called the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in Ontario. Being off-grid, ELA is completely dependent on diesel and propane fuel supply for all its electrical and heating needs, which makes ELA vulnerable to fluctuating fuel prices. As a result ELA emits a large amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) for its size. Energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies can reduce energy consumption and consequently energy cost, as well as GHG. Energy efficiency was very important to ELA due to the elevated fuel costs at this remote location. Minor upgrades to lighting, equipment and building envelope were able to reduce energy costs and reduce load. Efficient energy saving measures were recommended that save on operating and maintenance costs, namely, changing to LED lights, replacing old equipment like refrigerators and downsizing of ice makers. This resulted in a 4.8% load reduction and subsequently reduced the initial capital cost for biomass by $27,000, by $49,500 for wind power and by $136,500 for solar power. Many alternative energies show promise as potential energy sources to reduce the diesel and propane consumption at ELA including wind energy, solar heating and bio-mass. A biomass based CHP system using the existing diesel generators as back-up has the shortest pay back period of the technologies modeled. The biomass based CHP system has a pay back period of 4.1 years at $0.80 per liter of diesel, as diesel price approaches $ 2.00 per liter the pay back period reduces to 0.9 years, 50% the generation cost compared to present generation costs. Biomass has been successfully tried and tested in many off-grid communities particularly in a small-scale off-grid setting in North America and internationally. Also, the site specific solar and wind data show that ELA has potential to harvest renewable resources and produce heat and power at competitive rates compared to diesel and propane.

The legal reform process in South Africa has led to increasingly complex legislative requirements for new developments in the form of various authorization processes. Currently different organs of state, at different spheres of government exercise a range of powers and functions in respect of the approval of development applications. These authorisations typically relate to planning, water management, heritage resources, environmental management, air quality, etc. In order to improve the efficiency and alignment of authorisation processes there is a serious need to gain a better understanding of the interaction between the different authorisation processes as well as the challenges experienced. This research presents the results of a critical analysis of planning and environmental impact assessment (EIA) authorisation processes in the Mpumalanga Province and examines how authorisation processes are implemented and aligned, how efficient the processes are, why process inefficiencies occur and how the efficiency of processes can be improved. The outcome of the research suggests that there are three main success factors for efficiency, namely the legislative framework that provides for administrative and environmental justice, co-operative governance that provides the basis for good communication, and information and competence that injects expertise into the authorisation process. The so-called 'efficiency triangle' is conceptualised, which clearly illustrates the interaction between these success factors. / Thesis (M. Environmental Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

This paper examines the efficiency of pricing in the NFL point spread betting market, as hypothesized by the Efficient Market Hypothesis, through both statistical and economic tests. This market provides a simpler framework to test such economic hypotheses than conventional financial markets. Using a larger sample size than past literature, this paper finds that while the market is efficient in the aggregate sense, there are still some profit opportunities which imply pricing inefficiencies.

For energy utilities faced with expanded jurisdictional energy efficiency requirements and pursuing demand-side management (DSM) incentive programs in the large industrial sector, performance incentive programs can be an effective means to maximize the reliability of planned energy savings. Performance incentive programs balance the objectives of high participation rates with persistent energy savings by: (1) providing financial incentives and resources to minimize constraints to investment in energy efficiency, and (2) requiring that incentive payments be dependent on measured energy savings over time. As BC Hydro increases its DSM initiatives to meet the Clean Energy Act objective to reduce at least 66 per cent of new electricity demand with DSM by 2020, the utility is faced with a higher level of DSM risk, or uncertainties that impact the cost-effective acquisition of planned energy savings. For industrial DSM incentive programs, DSM risk can be broken down into project development and project performance risks. Development risk represents the project ramp-up phase and is the risk that planned energy savings do not materialize due to low customer response to program incentives. Performance risk represents the operational phase and is the risk that planned energy savings do not persist over the effective measure life. DSM project development and performance risks are, in turn, a result of industrial economic, technological and organizational conditions, or DSM risk factors. In the BC large industrial sector, and characteristic of large industrial sectors in general, these DSM risk factors include: (1) capital constraints to investment in energy efficiency, (2) commodity price volatility, (3) limited internal staffing resources to deploy towards energy efficiency, (4) variable load, process-based energy saving potential, and (5) a lack of organizational awareness of an operation’s energy efficiency over time (energy performance). This research assessed the capacity of alternative performance incentive program models to manage DSM risk in BC. Three performance incentive program models were assessed and compared to BC Hydro’s current large industrial DSM incentive program, Power Smart Partners – Transmission Project Incentives, itself a performance incentive-based program. Together, the selected program models represent a continuum of program design and implementation in terms of the schedule and level of incentives provided, the duration and rigour of measurement and verification (M&V), energy efficiency measures targeted and involvement of the private sector. A multi criteria assessment framework was developed to rank the capacity of each program model to manage BC large industrial DSM risk factors. DSM risk management rankings were then compared to program cost-effectiveness, targeted energy savings potential in BC and survey results from BC industrial firms on the program models. The findings indicate that the reliability of DSM energy savings in the BC large industrial sector can be maximized through performance incentive program models that: (1) offer incentives jointly for capital and low-cost operations and maintenance (O&M) measures, (2) allow flexible lead times for project development, (3) utilize rigorous M&V methods capable of measuring variable load, process-based energy savings, (4) use moderate contract lengths that align with effective measure life, and (5) integrate energy management software tools capable of providing energy performance feedback to customers to maximize the persistence of energy savings. While this study focuses exclusively on the BC large industrial sector, the findings of this research have applicability to all energy utilities serving large, energy intensive industrial sectors. / Graduate

Spectrum utilization efficiency is one of the primary concerns in the design of future wireless communication systems. Most performance metrics for wireless communication systems focus on either link level capacity or network throughput while ignore the spatial property of wireless transmissions. In this dissertation, we focus on the spatial spectral utilization efficiency of wireless transmissions. We first study the spatial spectral efficiency of single-cell and multi-cell wireless relay systems using area spectral efficiency (ASE) performance metric. We then generalize the performance metric, termed as generalized area spectral efficiency (GASE), to measure the spatial spectral utilization efficiency of arbitrary wireless transmissions. In particular, we first introduce the definition of GASE by illustrating its evaluation for conventional point-to-point transmission. Then we extend the analysis to four different transmission scenarios, namely dual-hop relay transmission, three-node cooperative relay transmission, two-user X channels, and underlay cognitive radio transmission. Finally, we apply the GASE performance metric to investigate the spatial spectral efficiency of wireless network with Poisson distributed nodes and quantify the spatial spectral opportunities that could be explored with secondary cognitive systems. Our research on the spatial spectral utilization efficiency provides a new perspective on the designing of wireless communication systems, especially on the transmission power optimization and space-spectrum resource exploitation. / Graduate / 0544 / leizhang@uvic.ca

Wheelchair manufacturers design their products to provide the best possible experience to their users. The user effort and wheelchair mechanical efficiency during motion are highly affected by rolling resistance, which is a resistive force depending on many factors such as vehicle speed, tire/floor materials and tire inflation pressure. The study of this force over several conditions could lead to improvements in wheelchair design. The Anatomical Model Propulsion System (AMPS) is a robotic device to test manual wheelchairs with better repeatability than human subjects, helping to identify the effect of resistive forces. It uses electric motors to apply torque directly to the rear wheel handrims. In this thesis, a control system is developed to achieve a specified wheelchair trajectory and velocity profile, by controlling the input torque to the system. A kinetic and dynamic model is used to estimate this necessary input. Data collected from different experiments allows to determine rolling resistance under various conditions. The results show that rolling resistance also varies with acceleration, affecting the overall mechanical efficiency of a wheelchair following different velocity profiles.

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