Research report submitted to the faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of Witwatersrand, in 50% fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in the field of Public and Development Management. March 2018 / The outputs in this report are based on the experiences, beliefs and perceptions of a crosssection of Solar Photovoltaic industry stakeholders on whether Local Content Requirements is an appropriate policy instrument for building a local industry and the extent to which the Local Content Requirements of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme have led to an increase in the South African solar component manufacturing capacity since the programme’s inception in November 2011. Protectionist policies, including Local Content Requirements, were used by now industrialised countries to develop their respective countries, and continue to be used to this day despite World Trade Organisation prohibitions. Four models on building local industries are discussed and their relationship to the two research questions explored. Interview participants agreed that the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme was instrumental in building a large-scale local renewable energy industry in the country, created jobs and excitement around manufacturing capacity potential. However, many believe that programme design and implementation interventions are required to improve the programme’s localisation impacts. The latest draft Integrated Resource Plan’s sizeable allocation for Solar Photovoltaic until 2030 presents an opportunity to drastically improve localisation benefits for the country. / GR2019

No description available.

No description available.

An entirely digital system is presented which has several benefits as compared to the systems that are deployed currently. Utilizing digital capabilities to a much greater extent than is currently used within the power system allows for various improvements upon the current system. One such improvement is the ease of configuring and using the system. Each device can easily alter its functionality through a user interface, and the addition of devices is as easy as plugging it in. Additionally, the burden on the transformer due to the increase in the number of devices is nullified. The information remains accurate and unchanged, even when new devices are added to the system. The entire system conforms to the IEC 61850 standard, such that it adheres to the requirements of the actual power system. / Master of Science

The contributions of this research are a scalable formulation and solution method for decentralized unit commitment, experimental results comparing decentralized unit commitment solution times to conventional unit commitment methods, a demonstration of the benefits of faster unit commitment computation time, and extensions of decentralized unit commitment to handle system network security constraints. We begin with a discussion motivating the shift from centralized power system control architectures to decentralized architectures and describe the characteristics of such an architecture. We then develop a formulation and solution method to solve decentralized unit commitment by adapting an existing approach for separable convex optimization problems to the nonconvex domain of unit commitment. The potential computational speed benefits of the novel decentralized unit commitment approach are then further investigated through a rolling-horizon framework that represents how system operators make decisions and adjustments online as new information is revealed. Finally, the decentralized unit commitment approach is extended to include network contingency constraints, a crucial function for the maintenance of system security. The results indicate decentralized unit commitment holds promise as a way of coordinating system operations in a future decentralized grid and also may provide a way to leverage parallel computing resources to solve large-scale unit commitment problems with greater speed and model fidelity than is possible with conventional methods.

<p>The main topic of this licentiate thesis is fast faultdetection. The thesis summaries the work performed in theproject“Fast fault detection for distributionsystems”.</p><p>In the first chapters of the thesis the term“fast”is used in a general manner. The term is laterdefined based upon considerations and conclusions made in thefirst chapters and then related to a specific time.</p><p>To be able to understand and appreciate why fast faultdetection is necessary, power system faults and theirconsequences are briefly discussed. The consequences of a faultare dependent of a number of different factors, one of thefactors being the duration of the fault.</p><p>The importance of the speed of the fault detection dependson the type of equipment used to clear the fault. A circuitbreaker which interrupt currents only when they pass through anatural zero crossing might be less dependent on the speed ofthe fault detection than a fault current limiter which limitsthe fault current before it has reached its first prospectivecurrent peak.</p><p>In order to be able to detect a fault in a power system, thepower system must be observed, i.e., measurements of relevantquantities must be performed so that the fault detectionequipment can obtain information of the state of the system.The fault detection equipment and some general methods of faultdetection are briefly described.</p><p>Some algorithms and their possible adaptation to fast faultdetection are described. A common principle of many algorithmsare that they assume that either a signal or the power systemobject can be described by a model. Sampled data values arethen fitted to the model so that an estimate of relevantparameters needed for fault detection is obtained. An algorithmwhich do not fit samples to a model but use instantaneouscurrent values for fault detection is also described andevaluated.</p><p>Since the exact state of a power system never is known dueto variations in power production and load, a model of thepower system or of the signal can never be perfect, i.e., theestimated parameter can never be truly correct. Furthermore,errors from the data acquisition system contribute to the totalerror of the estimated parameter.</p><p>Two case studies are used to study the performance of the(modified) algorithms. For those studies it has been shown thatthe algorithms can detect a fault within approximately 1msafter fault inception and that one of the algorithms candiscriminate between a fault and two types of common powersystem transients (capacitor and transformer energization).</p><p>The second case study introduced a system with two sourceswhich required a directional algorithm to discriminate betweenfaults inside or outside the protection zone.</p><p>It is concluded that under certain assumptions it ispossible to detect power system faults within approximately 1msand that it is possible to discriminate a power system faultfrom power system transient that regularly occurs within powersystems but which not are faults.</p>

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology. / Department of Electromechanical Engineering