Description:
This paper presents a new robust self-scheduling strategy for virtual power plants (VPPs) considering the uncertainty sources of electricity prices, wind generations, and loads. Multi-horizon information-gap decision theory (MH-IGDT) as a non-deterministic and non-probabilistic uncertainty modeling framework is proposed here to specifically model the uncertainty sources considering their various uncertainty horizons. Since each uncertain parameter tends to optimize its uncertainty horizon competitively for a particular value of the uncertainty budget, the proposed MH-IGDT model is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. To solve this multi-objective problem, enhanced normalized normal constraint (ENNC) method is presented, which can obtain efficient uniformly-distributed Pareto optimal solutions. The proposed ENNC includes augmented normalized normal constraint method and lexicographic optimization technique to enhance the search performance in the objective space. To address the unsolved issue of being risk-averse or risk-seeker for a VPP in the market, a bi-directional decision-making approach is presented. This decision maker comprises an ex-ante performance evaluation method and a forward-backward dynamic programming approach to hourly find the best Pareto solution within the generated risk-averse and risk-seeker Pareto frontiers. Simulation results of the proposed self-scheduling strategy are presented for a VPP including dispatchable/non-dispatchable units, storages, and loads.
Description:
Partnerships between the health sector and various organizations in the community have been encouraged as a new strategy to develop sports and recreation programs, and achieve public health objectives related to obesity prevention. The purpose of this study was to investigate the partnership-related processes and capacity-building strategies associated with the successful implementation of sports and recreation programs. The research design was a multiple-case study with cross-case comparisons. Eight sports and recreation programs funded by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation were investigated. Data collection included: semi-structured interviews with grant recipients and key partnership members (n=22); and document analysis. A capacity-building framework was used to guide data analysis. The findings showed that partnerships without the engagement of key stakeholders and a diversity of skills, resources, and approaches were limited to 'come and try' events rather than structured sports and recreation programs in the short term. Addressing the development of partnerships, by implementing a phased approach to program development and implementation may assist the sports and recreation sector build capacity to participate in partnership approaches to health promotion.
Description:
Strategy games can provide an opportunity to develop higher order thinking skills in students gifted in mathematics. Extending and engaging gifted students is a demanding task. This paper reports on a twelve-week project undertaken with a group of nine gifted lower secondary school students. These students played and analysed five traditional strategy games. Following this experience, they were asked to create a challenging strategy game of their own. This paper discusses the rationale for the use of traditional strategy games, outlines the methodology employed, explains the selection of specific games and describes the observed improvement in students' higher order thinking skills.
Description:
Strategy games can provide an opportunity to develop higher order thinking skills in students gifted in mathematics. Extending and engaging gifted students is a demanding task. This paper reports on a twelve-week project undertaken with a group of nine gifted lower secondary school students. These students played and analysed five traditional strategy games. Following this experience, they were asked to create a challenging strategy game of their own. This paper discusses the rationale for the use of traditional strategy games, outlines the methodology employed, explains the selection of specific games and describes the observed improvement in students' higher order thinking skills.
Description:
Restoration programmes for degraded aquatic ecosystems frequently focus on flow restoration or reinstatement, including recovery targets for volumes of water to be used for environmental benefit. Australia's Murray-Darling Basin is an example of a major system undergoing substantial water reform to balance the needs of competing users, including the environment, within the constraints of an arid climate. This reform revolves around accounting for finite volumes of water that have been shared amongst water users. We argue that while recovering water will provide good outcomes, as a sole intervention, it is not enough to deliver the desired environmental benefits of the reform given the significantly altered state of the catchment. Here, we present 10 measures that could be used to complement planned water recovery actions. These "complementary measures" integrate recovery actions, which when strategically combined with water delivery would significantly enhance water reform efforts to generate environmental outcomes in a highly modified system.
Description:
Due to green power generation, large solar plants with capacities in the order of several MWs are increasingly installed worldwide and plenty of these plants participate in electricity markets. However, the uncertain production of a solar plant poses a noticeable risk to the profit of a solar producer. To overcome the associated risk, storage systems have been recently paired with solar plants. Not only storage systems can increase the reliability of photovoltaic (PV) solar power, but also can increase economic benefits through energy arbitrage in an electricity market. Although paring a storage system with a solar plant is an economically promising combination, a proper bidding strategy model, which appropriately characterizes the uncertainties of both PV solar power productions and electricity prices, is essential. To do so, this paper proposes an affinely adjustable robust bidding strategy for a solar producer paired with a battery storage system. The uncertainties associated with solar power productions and electricity prices are characterized through bounded intervals in a controllable polyhedral uncertainty set. Affine functions are used to solve the proposed model directly without decomposition. Numerical results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Description:
To promote the penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), a charging facility (CF) planning model based on Yen's algorithm is proposed for coupled transportation and distribution systems (DSs) considering traffic congestion. This model not only takes into account the influence of new CFs on the power system but also considers the impact of CF locations on traffic flow distribution and congestion level in the transportation system (TS). Yen's algorithm is innovatively employed to offer multiple possible choices for EV drivers' route selection considering CF locations determined in the traffic flow assignment model. Overall, the total cost of both distribution and TSs is minimized to obtain the optimal CF planning results. For the DS, generation cost, energy loss, and penalty cost for voltage deviation are included. For the TS, the main objective is to ensure EVs can reach their destinations at the lowest cost, while the travel time due to different path selections and the delay time caused by congestion can be minimized. Finally, a comprehensive case study on the integrated IEEE 30-bus and a 25-node TS is conducted to validate our approach.
Description:
Positioned in the midst of the heated debate about the production of relevant and usable knowledge for practitioners in the nonprofit sector and a serious shortage of high-impact research that speaks to practice, the purpose of this Research Note is to direct nonprofit scholarship toward embracing “abduction,” which is the initial creative stage in scientific inquiry that facilitates the formulation of testable explanatory hypotheses and makes new discoveries in a sensory and logically structured way. We use an emerging interest in social innovation by the nonprofit sector as an illustrative example to show the advantages of using abductive reasoning as the primary method of reasoning for discovering new knowledge of a nascent but vital phenomenon. The novel contribution of this Research Note lies in encouraging scholarship on the nonprofit sector to an applied “practice-led” research process that is intellectually relevant and has the potential to bridge the scholar–practice divide.
Description:
This paper outlines an approach for collecting and integrating data useful for evidence based planning and decision making in the not-for-profit sector, in particular for local government policy and planning. Given the methodological advances in multi-level analysis and the nature of rigorous policy analysis, leading academics and practitioners are advocating that policy driven research to be undertaken at a number of levels of analysis. Recent years have brought an explosion of public domain data in many aspects of social, economic and cultural aspects of society (cites and examples) and with this comes the opportunity, as outlined here, to integrate relevant public domain data in order to construct community profiles for local government areas in Victoria.
Description:
This paper outlines an approach for collecting and integrating data useful for evidence based planning and decision making in the not-for-profit sector, in particular for local government policy and planning. Given the methodological advances in multi-level analysis and the nature of rigorous policy analysis, leading academics and practitioners are advocating that policy driven research to be undertaken at a number of levels of analysis. Recent years have brought an explosion of public domain data in many aspects of social, economic and cultural aspects of society (cites and examples) and with this comes the opportunity, as outlined here, to integrate relevant public domain data in order to construct community profiles for local government areas in Victoria.
Description:
•Presenting a new operation model for multi-carrier energy systems.•Uncertainty modeling by a multi-objective information gap decision theory approach.•Presenting a novel multi-objective solution method to solve the proposed model.•Introducing a new post-optimization method to attain the best robustness level. Multi-carrier energy systems can increase energy efficiency due to the ability of these systems to consider and optimize the interactions of various energy carriers. However, the operation of these systems is somehow different from the operation of conventional single-carrier energy systems. In this paper, a new operation strategy for multi-carrier energy systems including natural gas and electricity is proposed. Various energy converters, including conventional and renewable electricity generators, gas furnace, and combined heat and power generator, are modeled in the proposed strategy to supply different electric, heat, and gas loads in the output. The proposed operation strategy employs a multi-objective information gap decision theory approach to model the uncertainty sources of multi-carrier energy systems, such as the uncertainties of demand forecasts, wind power forecast, and photovoltaic power forecast. For solving the multi-objective optimization problem, based on information gap decision theory, for multi-carrier energy system operation, an enhanced directed search domain method is proposed as a new multi-objective optimization approach. The performance of the proposed multi-carrier energy system operation optimization model and the proposed enhanced directed search domain solution method is investigated on the IEEE 118-bus test system by comparing with the other alternatives.