Search results

The objective of this thesis is the definition and development of a comprehensive methodology of energy planning for areas isolated from the mains, considering not only the energy context of the country and its development towards a sustainable scenario, but also studying the potential of renewable generation in the remote area under study, the ability for demand management and the socio-economic aspects involved in the final decision on what renewable energy solution would be the most appropriate in accordance with the characteristics of the location. The research work is organized into three major phases. The first one defines the algorithm of analysis of the context energy of the country and its evolution towards a future energy scenario based on renewable energies. A second phase which analyzes the best configurations of hybrid renewable systems capable of responding to energy needs in the area, sorting them based on their net present value. And a third one introducing the method of multi-criteria analysis which allows to select, from among all possible configurations identified in the previous stage, the most appropriate to the needs and characteristics of the area to study, taking into account not only economic or technical aspects, but also sociological, political, and environmental criteria. Finally, the developed methodology is applied to a case concrete as example of its potential. An isolated community in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been selected since 90% of the population living in areas isolated from the mains, and being one of the African countries with the greatest potential for renewable energy generation. ; El objetivo de esta tesis es la definición y desarrollo de una metodología integral de planificación energética para zonas aisladas de la red eléctrica que considere no solo el contexto energético del país y su desarrollo hacia un escenario sostenible, sino también el estudio del potencial de generación renovable en la zona remota a estudiar, la capacidad de gestión de la ...

Construction activities that include renovation work and energy retrofits add almost twice as much value as the construction of new buildings, and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) contribute more than 70% of the value added in the EU building sector. This article analyses the legislation associated to Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) in Spain in order to identify the factors that will leverage their massive implementation. The paper is organized in three main sections: first one, it describes the geographical and social context of nZEB in Spain, then legislative requirements and policies are analysed; and finally, it identifies the training market penetration for nZEB.

[EN] In this study, we focus on the case of Spanish energy policy and its implications for sustainable energy development. In recent years, Spanish legislation has changed dramatically in its approach to sustainable energy sources. This change is despite EU and international efforts to increase energy efficiency, and to accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources (RES) in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Based on the socio-technical transitions literature, this paper assesses the role of the new legislation in this altered scenario, and analyzes the evolution of energy production in Spain in the EU context. The results are triangulated with two expert assessments. We find that Spanish energy policy is responding to the energy lobby's demands for protection for both their investment and their dominant position. This has resulted in a reduction in the number of investors combined with a lack of trust in both local and foreign investors in the sustainable energy sector, affecting also social innovations in energy transitions. We conclude that Spain is a particular case of concomitance between the energy sector and political power which raises concern about the viability of a higher level of energy sovereignty and the achievement of international commitments regarding climate change. ; We thank the editors' board and three anonymous reviewers for their very insightful advice on a previous version of the manuscript. This research was conducted as part of the GROW GREEN Project ID: 730283 Funded under: H2020-EU. We are grateful for funding from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia to cover the costs of open access publishing, and for funding from the University of Valencia to cover the costs of English language editing. ; Gabaldón Estevan, D.; Peñalvo-López, E.; Alfonso-Solar, D. (2018). The Spanish Turn against Renewable Energy Development. Sustainability. 10(4):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10041208 ; S ; 1 ; 17 ; 10 ; 4

In this study, we focus on the case of Spanish energy policy and its implications for sustainable energy development. In recent years, Spanish legislation has changed dramatically in its approach to sustainable energy sources. This change is despite EU and international efforts to increase energy efficiency, and to accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources (RES) in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Based on the socio-technical transitions literature, this paper assesses the role of the new legislation in this altered scenario, and analyzes the evolution of energy production in Spain in the EU context. The results are triangulated with two expert assessments. We find that Spanish energy policy is responding to the energy lobby's demands for protection for both their investment and their dominant position. This has resulted in a reduction in the number of investors combined with a lack of trust in both local and foreign investors in the sustainable energy sector, affecting also social innovations in energy transitions. We conclude that Spain is a particular case of concomitance between the energy sector and political power which raises concern about the viability of a higher level of energy sovereignty and the achievement of international commitments regarding climate change.

[EN] Construction activities that include renovation work and energy retrofits add almost twice as much value as the construction of new buildings, and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) contribute more than 70% of the value added in the EU building sector. This article analyses the legislation associated to Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) in Spain in order to identify the factors that will leverage their massive implementation. The paper is organized in three main sections: first one, it describes the geographical and social context of nZEB in Spain, then legislative requirements and policies are analysed; and finally, it identifies the training market penetration for nZEB. ; This work was completed by the Institute for Energy Engineering located at the Universitat Politècnica de València in the framework of MEnS's project (Ref. 649773). The authors deeply thanks the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia and all the organizations involved in this projects for their support and, specially, to the European Commission for their funding support. ; Cárcel Carrasco, FJ.; Peñalvo López, E.; Morcillo, I. (2017). Legal challenges in the implementation of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) in Spain. VITRUVIO - International Journal of Architectural Technology and Sustainability. 2(1):1-11. https://doi.org/10.4995/vitruvio-ijats.2017.7404 ; SWORD ; 1 ; 11 ; 2 ; 1 ; 2

[EN] The disposal volume of material for Construction and Demolition in Europe is increasing each year, that the European Union has decided to take control of the matter unifying practices and goals to achieve. This article analyses how waste management works in Italy adjusting its system to the European Union, regarding Construction and Demolition, taking into consideration the disposal of material coming from C&D (Construction and Demolition) production. In Italy, the disposition may differ according to the regions in which it is divided, and this must be taken into consideration when analysing information that reflects the different logistical aspect linked to the territory. It is also necessary to consider how the volume of waste can vary according to the size of the region considered and the type of industrial development to which it belongs. The analysis of the Italian situation shows their achievements regarding reaching a good level of recycling waste volume; indeed, their amount of C&D recycled waste after 2010 was always up to the 70% value established by the European Union, though barriers are still present in the field of waste management. Through data collecting, it has been seen the different volume that is generated in construction-related activities in the country, along with the recovered waste volume. Thus, the goal of this paper is to deepen the general knowledge on waste produced by Construction and Demolition in Italy and waste management practices adopted according to the European Union. ; This work was carried out at the Universitat Politècnica de València in the framework of CONDEREFF project (Ref. PGI05560-CONDEREFF). ; Cárcel-Carrasco, J.; Peñalvo-López, E.; Pascual Guillamón, M.; Salas Vicente, F. (2021). An Overview about the Current Situation on C&D Waste Management in Italy: Achievements and Challenges. Buildings. 11(7):1-12. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11070284 ; S ; 1 ; 12 ; 11 ; 7

[EN] Integration of renewable energy sources require an increase in the flexibility of power systems. Demand response is a valuable flexible resource that is not currently being fully exploited. Small and medium industrial consumers can deliver a wide range of underused flexibility resources associated with the electricity consumption in their production processes. Flexible resources should compete in liberalized operation markets to ensure the reliability of the system at a minimum cost. This paper presents a new tool to assist industrial demand response to participate in operation markets and optimize its value. The tool uses a combined physical-mathematical modelling of the industrial demand response and a Parallel Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm specifically tuned for the proposed problem to maximize the profit. The main advantages of the proposed tool are demonstrated in the paper through its application to the participation of a meat factory in the Spanish tertiary reserve market during a whole year using a quarter-hourly time resolution. The enhanced performance of the proposed tool with respect to previous methodologies is shown with these four flexible processes examples, where the maximum available profit obtained in the simultaneous consideration of all different flexible processes is computed. The flexible processes are technical and economically characterized in a way that makes the tool valid for most of the processes in the industry. ; This work was supported in part by the Primeros Proyectos de Investigacion under Grant PAID-06-18, in part by the Vicerrectorado de Investigacion, Innovacion y Transferencia de la Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) Valencia-Spain, Generalitat Valenciana through the Research Project under Grant AICO/2019/001, in part by the Spanish Administration under Grant FPU2016/00962, in part by the AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Spanish Government) through the Research Projects under Grant ENE-2016-78509-C3-1-P and ...

1 15 10 5 ; S ; [EN] Similarly to how Steinmetz developed his theory of alternating current in single-phase sinusoidal systems, a few formal relationships between expressions of the instantaneous and Buchholz's apparent power in three-phase systems were identified in this paper. Based on these relationships, a methodology to express Buchholz's apparent power and its components in any three-phase, wye-configured system-sinusoidal or non-sinusoidal, balanced or unbalanced-through instantaneous power expressions was established. The application of the proposed method to the entire system allowed the determination of a novel quantity referred to as neutral-displacement power, which measured the impacts of the phenomena caused by the neutral path operation on the values of the source and load apparent power. These impacts were analyzed using a real-world urban installation with a neutral conductor deterioration simulation via an Excel platform as an application example. This research was funded by the European Commission, grant number 847132. The APC was funded by the European Commission, grant number 847132. We gratefully thank Eléctrica de Vinalesa, S.L.U., for allowing us to take measurements using their electrical networks, and MDPI (www.mdpi.com/authors/english) for their English language editing. The authors deeply thank the European Commission for their support and funding provision. León-Martínez, V.; Montañana-Romeu, J.; Peñalvo-López, E.; Valencia-Salazar, I. (2020). Relationship between Buchholz's Apparent Power and Instantaneous Power in Three-Phase Systems. Applied Sciences. 10(5):1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10051798 Czarnecki, L. S. (1987). What is wrong with the Budeanu concept of reactive and distortion power and why it should be abandoned. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, IM-36(3), 834-837. doi:10.1109/tim.1987.6312797 Czarnecki, L. S. (1988). Orthogonal decomposition of the currents in a 3-phase nonlinear asymmetrical circuit with a nonsinusoidal voltage source. IEEE ...

[EN] A transition to a sustainable energy system is essential. In this context, smart grids represent the future of power systems for efficiently integrating renewable energy sources and active consumer participation. Recently, different studies were performed that defined the conceptual architecture of power systems and their agents. However, these conceptual architectures do not overcome all issues for the development of new electricity markets. Thus, a novel conceptual architecture is proposed. The transactions of energy, operation services, and economic flows among the agents proposed are carefully analysed. In this regard, the results allow setting their activities' boundaries and state their relationships with electricity markets. The suitability of implementing local electricity markets is studied to enforce competition among distributed energy resources by unlocking all the potential that active consumers have. The proposed architecture is designed to offer flexibility and efficiency to the system thanks to a clearly defined way for the exploitation of flexible resources and distributed generation. This upgraded architecture hereby proposed establishes the characteristics of each agent in the forthcoming markets and studies to overcome the barriers to the large deployment of renewable energy sources. ; This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia, Industria, y Competitividad (Spanish Government) under research project ENE-2016-78509-C3-1-P, and EU FEDER funds. The authors received funds from these grants for covering the costs to publish in open access. This work was also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education under the scholarship FPU16/00962. ; Rodríguez-García, J.; Ribó-Pérez, DG.; Álvarez, C.; Peñalvo-López, E. (2019). Novel Conceptual Architecture for the Next-Generation Electricity Markets to Enhance a Large Penetration of Renewable Energy. Energies. 12(13):1-23. https://doi.org/10.3390/en12132605 ; S ; 1 ; 23 ; 12 ; 13 ; Gabaldón, A., Guillamón, A., Ruiz, M. C., Valero, S., ...

[EN] Energy efficiency in buildings is one of the main challenges in EU policy, since it is difficult to find common strategies and policies among Member States. This article describes the USE Efficiency project, an initiative to create a common training framework for energy efficiency systems in buildings based on the Energy Performance Building Directive (EPBD), through university actions. Universities and students are proposed as shining examples both for energy efficiency solutions and for energy efficiency behaviour. Moreover, involving university students guarantees acting on closest future market players and most convincing actor in diffusion of public opinions. The project aims to improve energy efficiency in university buildings and to establish training program for students around European countries. In fact, this activity involves 9 Universities (Technology Faculties and Faculties of Engineering) and 4 technological and market players from widespread countries in EU.Initially, a mapping of the methodologies used for evaluating energy efficiency at the different countries is carried out. Students are trained in energy efficiency methods and strategies, having real work experience implementing these Energy Performance Assessment (EPA) methodologies in their own buildings. The wide geographical coverage of the consortium allows an important crossover of methodologies to achieve technical results even to a professional and technological level. Then, the analysed buildings at each university are monitored in order to collect data, which are then used to plan solutions to improve energy performance of the university buildings. This paper describes this innovative training initiative, which involves students as main actors, working and interacting together with professors and technicians in order to improve energy efficiency in their educational centres. ; This initiative responds to a common effort between 9 European universities and 3 market players, funded by the "Universities and Students for Energy ...

[EN] Electricity has become one of the main driving forces for development, especially in remote areas where the lack of energy is linked to poverty. Traditionally, in these areas power is supplied by grid extension projects, which are expensive, or stand-alone systems based on fossil fuels. An actual alternative to these solutions is community micro-grid projects based on distributed renewable energy sources. However, these solutions need to introduce a holistic approach in order to be successfully implemented in real cases. The main purpose of this research work is the definition and development of a comprehensive methodology to encourage the use of decentralized renewable power systems to provide power supply to non-electrified areas. The methodology follows a top-down approach. Its main novelty is that it interlinks a macro and micro analysis dimension, considering not only the energy context of the country where the area under study is located and its development towards a sustainable scenario; but also the potential of renewable power generation, the demand side management opportunities and the socio-economic aspects involved in the final decision on what renewable energy solution would be the most appropriate for the considered location. The implementation of this methodology provides isolated areas a tool for sustainable energy development based on an environmentally friendly and socially participatory approach. Results of implementing the methodology in a case study showed the importance of introducing a holistic approach in supplying power energy to isolated areas, stating the need for involving all the different stakeholders in the decision-making process. Despite final raking on sustainable power supply solutions may vary from one area to another, the implementation of the methodology follows the same procedure, which makes it an inestimable tool for governments, private investors and local communities. ; This research was funded by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and Generalitat Valenciana, ...

[EN] Energy is a key factor in sustainability and a very attractive but risky sector for entrepreneurs. The need for sustainability in the energy sector forces the introduction of renewable sources in any scenario considered, but this investment must be thoroughly assessed. A methodology is required that enables the deduction of a realistic level of participation of renewable energy in the energy scenario in each particular case. Such a methodology should take into account all the factors involved and, by conciliating the different constraints imposed by each of them, find the maximum level of renewable energy possible in the system. This paper introduces a new methodology to address this problem by taking into account demand, generation, level of resources and technologies; and applies it to a particular case in a region of Democratic Republic of Congo. The uncertainties present in the energy sector, as well as the numerous factors at play, call for scenario planning, and this paper presents a structured procedure for viewing plausible futures. ; This work was carried out at the Institute for Energy Engineering located at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia in the framework of INICIA and GrowGreen projects (Ref. BIA2013-48157-C2-2-R and 649773, respectively). The authors deeply thank the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and all the organizations involved in these projects for their support and, especially, to the National Government and European Commission for their funding provision. ; Peñalvo-López, E.; Cárcel Carrasco, FJ.; Devece Carañana, CA.; Morcillo Marco, AI. (2017). A Methodology for Analysing Sustainability in Energy Scenarios. Sustainability. 9(9):1590-1601. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9091590 ; S ; 1590 ; 1601 ; 9 ; 9

[EN] Rooftop gardens ona building have proved to be a good way to improve its storm water management, but many other benefits can be obtained from the installation of these systems, such as reduction of energy consumption, decrease of the heat stress, abatement on CO2 emissions, etc. In this paper, the effect from the presence of these rooftop gardens on abuilding's energy consumption has been investigated by experimental campaigns using a green roof ona public building in a Mediterranean location in Spain. The obtained results demonstrate a substantial improvement by the installation of the green roof onthe building's cooling energy demand for a standard summer day, in the order of 30%, and a reduction, about 15%, in the heating energy demand for a winter day. Thus, given the longer duration of the summer conditions along the year, a noticeable reduction on energy demand could be obtained. Simulation analysis, using commercial software TRNSYS code, previously calibrated using experimental data for typical summer and winter days, allows for the extrapolation to the entire year of these results deducing noticeable improvement in energy efficiency, in the order of 19%, but with an increase of 6% in the peak power during the winter period. ; This work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the project Green Cities for Climate and Water Resilience, Sustainable Economic Growth, Healthy Citizens and Environments with reference 730283. ; Peñalvo-López, E.; Cárcel Carrasco, FJ.; Alfonso-Solar, D.; Valencia-Salazar, I.; Hurtado-Perez, E. (2020). Study of the Improvement on Energy Efficiency for a Building in the Mediterranean Area by the Installation of a Green Roof System. Energies. 13(5):1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13051246 ; S ; 1 ; 14 ; 13 ; 5 ; Jim, C. Y. (2017). Green roof evolution through exemplars: Germinal prototypes to modern variants. Sustainable Cities and Society, 35, 69-82. doi:10.1016/j.scs.2017.08.001 ; Dos Santos, S. M., Silva, J. F. F., dos ...