scholarly journals Visibility Assessment of New Photovoltaic Power Plants in Areas with Special Landscape Value

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 703
Author(s):  
Enrique Zorzano-Alba ◽  
Luis Alfredo Fernandez-Jimenez ◽  
Eduardo Garcia-Garrido ◽  
Pedro M. Lara-Santillan ◽  
Alberto Falces ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Observation Time ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Photovoltaic Power ◽  
Perception Time ◽  
Landscape Value ◽  
Cultural Interest ◽  
Visual Impact

Power plants based on renewable sources offer environmental, technical and economic advantages. Of particular importance is the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional power plants. Despite the advantages, people are often opposed to the construction of these facilities due to their high visual impact, particularly if they are close to places with a great cultural and/or landscape value. This paper proposes a new methodology for identifying the most suitable geographical areas for the construction of new photovoltaic (PV) power plants in zones of special scenic or cultural interest, helping to keep the environment free from the visual intrusions caused by these facilities. From several repeated analyses, the degree of visibility of the new PV plant, the potential observation time of passing visitors, considering the route they follow and their speed, and the increase in visibility of the plants when seen totally or partially with the sky as background, are determined. The result obtained is a map showing the ranking of the geographical areas based on a variable calculated in such analyses: the Global Accumulated Perception Time (GAPT). The application of this methodology can help the different agents involved in the decision-making process for the installation of new PV plant by providing them with an objective visibility criterion.

Democracy over power? The democratic decision-making process in the case of the attempted privatization of Estonia’s power production

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Anna Khakee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

The suspense-filled attempted partial privatization of the Narva Power Plants in the neo-liberal darling Estonia involved a rich cast, from trade unions and local scientists, via Estonian courts and ombudsmen to international consulting firms, major global banks and the US government. More important, a detailed single case study on the democratic decision-making process in this privatization case makes it possible to go beyond common generalizations regarding the consequences of neo-liberalism for democratic processes. It shows that purported proponents of economic neo-liberalism such as the US government sometimes use their arguments to advance the narrow business interests of politically well-connected firms. Established private firms can behave in a more rent-seeking manner than publicly owned, ex-communist companies. Liberal economic principles of open competition and a level playing-field are at times used by actors in the democratic process to question top-down, opaque economic decisions.

A Framework and Model for Assessing the Design Point Performance, Off-Design Point Performance, Control, Economics and Risks of Brayton Helium Gas Turbine Cycles for Generation IV Nuclear Power Plants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Gad-Briggs ◽  
Pericles Pilidis ◽  
Theoklis Nikolaidis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Gas Turbine ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Nuclear Power Plants ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Design Point ◽  
Load Following ◽  
Gen Iv ◽  
Cycle Efficiency

A framework – NuTERA (Nuclear Techno-Economic and Risk Assessment) has been developed to set out the requirements for evaluating Generation IV (Gen IV) Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) at the design conceptual stage. The purpose of the framework is to provide guidelines for future tools that are required to support the decision-making process on the choice of Gen IV concepts and cycle configurations. In this paper, the underpinning of the framework has been demonstrated to enable the creation of an analyses tool, which evaluates the design of an NPP that utilises helium closed Brayton gas turbine cycles. The tool at the broad spectrum focuses on the component and cycle design, Design Point (DP) and Off-Design Point (ODP) performance, part power and load following operations. Specifically, the design model has been created to provide functionalities that look at the in-depth sensitivities of the design factors and operation that affect the efficiency of an NPP such as temperature and pressure ratios, inlet cycle temperatures, component efficiencies, pressure losses. The ODP performance capabilities include newly derived component maps for the reactor, intercooler and recuperator for long term Off-Design (OD) operation. With regard to short term OD, which is typically driven by changes in ambient conditions, the ability to analyse the cycle load following capabilities are possible. An economic model has also been created, which calculates the component costs and the baseline economic evaluation. An incorporated risk model quantifies the performance, operational, financial and design impact risks. However, the tool is able to optimise the NPP cycle configuration based on the best economics using the Levelised Unit Electricity Cost (LUEC) as a measure. The tool has been used to demonstrate a typical decision-making process on 2 Gen IV helium closed gas turbine cycles, which apply to the Gas-cooled Fast Reactors (GFRs) and Very-High Temperature Reactors (VHTRs). The cycles are the Simple Cycle Recuperator (SCR) and Intercooled Cycle Recuperator (ICR). The tool was able to derive the most efficient cycle configurations for the ICR (53% cycle efficiency) and SCR (50% cycle efficiency). Based on these efficiency figures, the baseline LUEC ($/MWh) for the year 2020 is $62.13 for the ICR and $61.84 for the SCR. However, the inclusion of the cost of contingencies due to risks and the subsequent economic optimisation resulted in a cost of $69.70 and $69.80 for the ICR and SCR respectively.

scholarly journals Risk-Informed Approach to Safety Operation of Units of Nuclear Power Plants

10.12737/189 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Ершов ◽  
G. Ershov ◽  
Антонов ◽  
Aleksandr Antonov ◽  
Морозова ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Nuclear Power Plants ◽  
Probabilistic Methods ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Widespread Application ◽  
Safety Assurance ◽  
Safety Operation ◽  
Method Approach

Safety assurance of NPP units operation is the top priority objective for operating and regulatory organizations. For the purpose of NPP safety assurance deterministic and probabilistic methods the main advantages of which are combined into risk-informed method (approach) are traditionally utilized. Nowadays the risk-informed approach has a widespread application in the riskinformed decision-making process.

scholarly journals Multi-criteria prioritization of the renewable power plants in Australia using the fuzzy logic in decision-making method (FMCDM)

Clean Energy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 780-798
Author(s):  
Amin Aryanfar ◽  
Aslan Gholami ◽  
Payam Ghorbannezhad ◽  
Bijan Yeganeh ◽  
Mahdi Pourgholi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Fuzzy Logic ◽  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Future Scenario ◽  
Renewable Power ◽  
Current State ◽  
Payback Time

Abstract The presented study focused on developing an innovative decision-making framework to select the best renewable-power-plant technologies, considering comprehensive techno-economic and environmental variables. Due to the favourable conditions, Australia was selected as the case study. A fuzzy-logic method and analytical hierarchy process were applied to prioritize different renewable-energy power plants. The techno-economic factors included levelized cost of energy, initial cost, simple payback time, and operation and maintenance costs along with environmental factors including carbon payback time, energy payback time and greenhouse-gas emissions were used to rank the power plants. The results showed that the capital cost and simple payback time had the highest priority from an economic point of view. In comparison, greenhouse-gas emissions and carbon payback time were the dominant environmental factors. The analysis results provided economic and environmental priority tables for developing different power plants in the current state and a future scenario by 2030. The fuzzy results and pairwise composite matrix of alternatives indicated that the onshore wind, offshore wind, single-axis tracker polycrystalline photovoltaic, single-axis tracker monocrystalline photovoltaic, fix-tilted polycrystalline photovoltaic and fix-tilted monocrystalline photovoltaic scored the highest in the current state. In contrast, by 2030, the single-axis tracker photovoltaic power plants will be the best choice in the future scenario in Australia. Finally, the results were used and analysed to recommend and suggest several policy implementations and future research studies.

scholarly journals A Multi-Attribute Expansion Planning Model for Integrated Gas–Electricity System

Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vahid Khaligh ◽  
Majid Oloomi Buygi ◽  
Amjad Anvari-Moghaddam ◽  
Josep M. Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Data Exchange ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
The Other ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Electricity Networks ◽  
Expansion Planning ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Electricity Network ◽  
Electricity Systems

Gas-fired power plants are environmentally friendly because of their high efficiency rates and low CO2 emissions. On the other hand, the output power of renewable generators is stochastic, meaning that additional capacity must be held in reserve throughout the system. Gas-fired power plants are ideally suited to mitigate renewable uncertainties as they are more flexible and can easily be fired up in just a few minutes, and subsequently be shut down. Increased use of gas-fired power plants makes gas and electricity networks more dependent, so that adequacy in fuel supply of electricity network becomes a majority. However expansion planning of gas and electricity systems is accomplished by private gas and electricity companies, having no effective data exchange mechanism together. So there is a need to provide a model that coordinates the expansion planning of gas and electricity networks. On the other hand, expansion cost of either gas or electricity network and risk criteria of integrated energy system may have priority in decision-making process. With different challenging attributes, there is a gap in the literature to provide a model that takes into account the privacy of energy parties with a minimum data exchange, while considering different attributes in decision-making process. In this paper a multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) method for co-expansion planning of gas and electricity systems is introduced. The proposed MADM method supposes that a central entity as Ministry of Energy (ME) is responsible for coordinated expansion planning of gas and electricity networks, while taking into account the privacy of gas and electricity energy parties. Decision-making attributes are conflicting and the proposed method selects the best plan based on a compromise among the attributes. Different attributes including gas expansion cost (GEC), electricity expansion cost (EEC), minimum of maximum regret (MMR) and β-robustness (β_R) are considered to find the best plan with regard to the preferences of independent gas and electricity network operators. In this regard, two multi-attribute decision analysis methodologies are employed: analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used as a simple way to weight and rank all the attributes objectively and find the relative importance of various plans, and the weighted sum method to provide a general composite index and finding the final appropriate plan. A real case study in the Khorasan province of Iran, which has a high penetration level of gas-consuming generation units (GCGU), is utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed MADM method. Results are compared with a Pareto optimal method to qualify the accuracy of proposed method.

scholarly journals L'enquête publique préalable à la décision comme modèle alternatif

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-926
Author(s):  
Jean-Philippe Colson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Transmission Lines ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Inquiry Process ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Points Of View

This paper surveys the present state of French law concerning local inquiries on works projects in the energy sector, such as dams, power plants, transmission lines, etc. This is done in the light of the Democratization of Inquiries Bill, which received first reading in the French National Assembly in April, 1983. The subject is treated from three points of view : the scope of application of the inquiry procedure ; the inquiry process itself ; and its effectiveness as a means towards citizens's involvement in public decisionmaking. As regards the scope of the procedure, the Bill would extend it somewhat beyond the cumulative scope of the several existing types of inquiry. Any project affecting the environment would normally be subjected to be the inquiry procedure. As regards the inquiry process itself the Bill would strengthen the independence of inquiry commissioners in that it gives them broader investigative powers, allows them to hold contradictory public hearings upon request albeit with the agreement of the decision-making authority, and requires them to publish reports, with reasons of each inquiry. As regards the effectiveness of the procedure, the Bill would make it easier for dissatisfied parties to obtain a injunction restraining the implementation of a project if the commissioner had reported against it. On the whole, the Bill seems to promise significant improvements in the inquiry process, particularly as it provides for contradictory debate, including the consideration of alternative proposals. However, it leaves open a number of questions about the real purpose served by the procedure and about the proper timing of the inquiry in the total decision-making process.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document