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Sustainable Energy Consumption

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A: Sustainable Energy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 June 2019) | Viewed by 23942

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
GECAD-Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development, P-4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Interests: artificial intelligence; decision-support systems; energy markets; machine learning; smart buildings; virtual power players
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
GECAD-Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development, Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), P-4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: artificial intelligence; demand response; electric vehicles; electricity markets; power and energy systems; renewable and sustainable energy; smart grids
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: power grids; power engineering computing; frequency control; power system security; power system interconnection; power system simulation; optimization; power generation control; HVDC power
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of System Design Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan
Interests: automated metering infrastructure; distributed systems; edge computing; energy data services; sensor networks; smart buildings; smart cities
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Energy sustainability is a key challenge for a developed and sustainable world. The use of renewable energy has significantly increased over the past few years, bringing new technical and business challenges to the energy sector.

Consumers are key players in this context, as demand flexibility is crucial to cope with the intermittency of most renewable energy sources, such as wind and sun. Demand active participation is particularly important to ensure the efficient use of the available energy at local and global level.

This Special Issue, “Sustainable Energy Consumption”, addresses the different perspectives of energy consumption and demand for ensuring energy sustainability, increased energy efficiency, and reasonable energy costs. 

We invite papers on innovative scientific and technical developments, sound case studies, and reviews, which are relevant and/or related to “Sustainable Energy Consumption”. Selected papers are expected to propose models, methods, and tools that address demand response, demand side management, consumption analysis and profiling, as well as different aspects related to energy demand and its management in the scope of sustainable energy systems. In this sense, the topics of interest also include smart grids, renewable-based generation, energy storage systems, distributed energy resources, efficient energy buildings, electric and hybrid vehicles, as long as the energy consumption aspects are considered.

Dr. Carlos Ramos
Dr. Zita Vale
Dr. Peter Palensky
Dr. Hiroaki Nishi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • Active consumers
  • Demand response
  • Demand side management
  • Electric and hybrid vehicles
  • Energy efficiency
  • Energy efficient buildings
  • Energy management
  • Energy policy
  • Energy storage
  • Load flexibility
  • Renewable energy
  • Smart grids

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 151 KiB  
Editorial
Sustainable Energy Consumption
by Carlos Ramos, Zita Vale, Peter Palensky and Hiroaki Nishi
Energies 2021, 14(20), 6665; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14206665 - 14 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1613
Abstract
Energy use in homes and buildings represents an important part of the load of electrical systems [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Energy Consumption)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

22 pages, 5297 KiB  
Article
Estimation of Building Thermal Performance using Simple Sensors and Air Conditioners
by Yuiko Sakuma and Hiroaki Nishi
Energies 2019, 12(15), 2950; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12152950 - 31 Jul 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2732
Abstract
Energy and environmental problems have attracted attention worldwide. Energy consumption in residential sectors accounts for a large percentage of total consumption. Several retrofit schemes, which insulate building envelopes to increase energy efficiency, have been adapted to address residential energy problems. However, these schemes [...] Read more.
Energy and environmental problems have attracted attention worldwide. Energy consumption in residential sectors accounts for a large percentage of total consumption. Several retrofit schemes, which insulate building envelopes to increase energy efficiency, have been adapted to address residential energy problems. However, these schemes often fail to balance the installment cost with savings from the retrofits. To maximize the benefit, selecting houses with low thermal performance by a cost-effective method is inevitable. Therefore, an accurate, low-cost, and undemanding housing assessment method is required. This paper proposes a thermal performance assessment method for residential housing. The proposed method enables assessments under the existing conditions of residential housings and only requires a simple and affordable monitoring system of power meters for an air conditioner (AC), simple sensors (three thermometers at most), a BLE beacon, and smartphone application. The proposed method is evaluated thoroughly by using both simulation and experimental data. Analysis of estimation errors is also conducted. Our method shows that the accuracy achieved with the proposed three-room model is 9.8% (relative error) for the simulation data. Assessments on the experimental data also show that our proposed method achieved Ua value estimations using a low-cost system, satisfying the requirements of housing assessments for retrofits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Energy Consumption)
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23 pages, 4409 KiB  
Article
Demand Response and Distributed Generation Remuneration Approach Considering Planning and Operation Stages
by Cátia Silva, Pedro Faria and Zita Vale
Energies 2019, 12(14), 2721; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12142721 - 16 Jul 2019
Cited by 36 | Viewed by 4162
Abstract
The need for new business models to replace existing ones, soon obsolete, is a subject often discussed among researchers in the area. It is essential to find a practical solution that includes the concepts of demand response and distributed generation in the energy [...] Read more.
The need for new business models to replace existing ones, soon obsolete, is a subject often discussed among researchers in the area. It is essential to find a practical solution that includes the concepts of demand response and distributed generation in the energy markets, these being the future of the electricity grid. It is believed that these resources can bring advantages to the operation of the system, namely increasing technical efficiency. However, one of the problems is the aggregation of small resources as a result of the associated uncertainties. The authors propose a business model with three main phases used in planning: optimal scheduling, aggregation, and remuneration. In this paper, a new phase was added, the classification, with the main purpose of assisting the aggregator of these small resources in operating situations. The focus is on the fair remuneration of participants in the management of the market, in addition to minimizing operating costs. After testing four different remuneration methods, it was proved that the method proposed by the authors obtained better results, proving the viability of the proposed model. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Energy Consumption)
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30 pages, 2307 KiB  
Article
Grey SWARA-FUCOM Weighting Method for Contractor Selection MCDM Problem: A Case Study of Floating Solar Panel Energy System Installation
by Qingpeng Cao, Moses Olabhele Esangbedo, Sijun Bai and Caroline Olufunke Esangbedo
Energies 2019, 12(13), 2481; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12132481 - 27 Jun 2019
Cited by 48 | Viewed by 5421
Abstract
Selection of the most appropriate contractor for the installation of solar panels is essential to maximizing the benefit of this renewable, sustainable energy source. Solar energy is one of the 100% renewable energy sources, but implementation may not be very simple and cost-effective. [...] Read more.
Selection of the most appropriate contractor for the installation of solar panels is essential to maximizing the benefit of this renewable, sustainable energy source. Solar energy is one of the 100% renewable energy sources, but implementation may not be very simple and cost-effective. A key phase in the implementation of renewable energy is the evaluation of contractors for the installation of solar panels, which is addressed as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. A new hybrid method is proposed that combines the stepwise weight analysis ratio assessment (SWARA) and full consistent method (FUCOM) weights that are represented as grey numbers used with traditional grey relational analysis (GRA) and evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) methods. The ranking of contractors by both methods is the same, which confirmed the results presented in this research. The use of the grey SWARA-FUCOM weighting method combined with the GRA and EDAS methods increased the decision-makers’ (DMs) confidence in awarding the installation of the solar panel energy system to the top-ranked contractor. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Energy Consumption)
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18 pages, 5740 KiB  
Article
Thermal-Aware Hybrid Workload Management in a Green Datacenter towards Renewable Energy Utilization
by Yuling Li, Xiaoying Wang, Peicong Luo and Qingyi Pan
Energies 2019, 12(8), 1494; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12081494 - 19 Apr 2019
Cited by 30 | Viewed by 4314
Abstract
The increase in massive data processing and computing in datacenters in recent years has resulted in the problem of severe energy consumption, which also leads to a significant carbon footprint and a negative impact on the environment. A growing number of IT companies [...] Read more.
The increase in massive data processing and computing in datacenters in recent years has resulted in the problem of severe energy consumption, which also leads to a significant carbon footprint and a negative impact on the environment. A growing number of IT companies with operating datacenters are adopting renewable energy as part of their energy supply to offset the consumption of brown energy. In this paper, we focused on a green datacenter using hybrid energy supply, leveraged the time flexibility of workloads in the datacenter, and proposed a thermal-aware workload management method to maximize the utilization of renewable energy sources, considering the power consumption of both computing devices and cooling devices at the same time. The critical knob of our approach was workload shifting, which scheduled more delay-tolerant workloads and allocated resources in the datacenter according to the availability of renewable energy supply and the variation of cooling temperature. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we conducted simulation experiments using the Cloudsim-plus tool. The results demonstrated that the proposed method could effectively reduce the consumption of brown energy while maximizing the utilization of green energy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Energy Consumption)
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18 pages, 618 KiB  
Article
Promoting Energy Performance Contracting for Achieving Urban Sustainability: What is the Research Trend?
by Wenjie Zhang and Hongping Yuan
Energies 2019, 12(8), 1443; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12081443 - 15 Apr 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3907
Abstract
The increasing demand for applying energy performance contracting (EPC) for urban energy conservation has resulted in a significant amount of publications over the past decade. This study tries to identify future research trends in the subject of EPC through analyzing 127 journal papers [...] Read more.
The increasing demand for applying energy performance contracting (EPC) for urban energy conservation has resulted in a significant amount of publications over the past decade. This study tries to identify future research trends in the subject of EPC through analyzing 127 journal papers published from 2008 to 2018. Based on the analysis and discussion of the EPC research, several main research trends were identified. The research results reveal an increasing research interest in EPC over the period. The findings imply that case study is the major research method and descriptive analysis and statistical analysis are primarily used for data analysis. In addition, EPC research in the past decade focused on five major research topics, which are ‘implementation of EPC projects’, ‘EPC mechanism and business models’, ‘decision-making in EPC projects’, ‘Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) in EPC projects’, and ‘risk management in EPC projects’. Based on the five research topics, future research trends and directions in EPC were identified as well. The findings of this study can be informative and valuable for guiding future research in EPC, and are particularly helpful for researchers who are keen to open a new window of investigating EPC issues worldwide. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Energy Consumption)
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