Humanity is dependent on natural resources. Use and productivity of these resources plays an important role in energy savings and circular economy. The goal of this contribution is to evaluate productivity of resources in the frame of EU countries. Single analysis deals with data from the publicly available portal database and collected data were processed in the statistical software JMP. The trend of development and analysis of variability and linear dependence helped to create cluster analysis and comparison of the EU countries. The results from the view of average value of the indicator registered the growth, and from the view of variability the statistically important differences were verified for EU member states. Some pairs of indicators recorded positive, while some pairs recorded negative linear dependence. Cluster analysis shows two groups of countries—the first one with positive results, having the lowest tax burden in the case of energy taxes and environment, and the second... [more]

The implementation of monitoring tools and energy management systems (EnMSs) supports companies in their long-term energy efficiency strategies, and they are essential to analyse the effectiveness of energy performance improvement actions (EPIAs). The first fundamental step towards increasing energy efficiency is the development of energy audits (EAs). EAs provide comprehensive information about the energy usage in a specific facility, identifying and quantifying cost-effective EPIAs. The crucial role of these tools in clean energy transition is remarked by the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), which promotes the implementation of EAs and EnMS programmes. The purpose of this work is to better understand the link between EnMSs (specifically ISO 50001) and EAs in the EED Article 8 implementation in two industrial and two tertiary sectors in Italy. Moreover, the impact of company size, energy monitoring systems, and EnMSs on planned and/or implemented EPIAs is analysed. Our find... [more]

Integrating data analytics, optimisation and dynamic control to support energy services has seen significant interest in recent years. Larger appliances used in an industry context are now provided with Internet of Things (IoT)-based interfaces that can be remotely monitored, with some also provided with actuation interfaces. The combined use of IoT and edge computing enables connectivity between energy systems and infrastructure, providing the means to implement both energy efficiency/optimisation and cost reduction strategies. We investigate the economic implications of harnessing IoT and edge/cloud technologies to support energy management for HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems in buildings. In particular, we evaluate the cost savings for building operations through energy optimisation. We use a real use case for energy optimisation as identified in the EU “Sporte2” project (focusing on the energy optimisation of sports facilities) and explore several scenarios... [more]

Energy efficiency is a huge opportunity for both the developed and the developing world, and ICT will be the key enabler towards realising this challenge, in a huge variety of ways across the full range of industries. In the telecommunications space in particular, power consumption and the resulting energy-related pollution are becoming major operational and economical concerns. The exponential increases in network traffic and the number of connected devices both make energy efficiency an increasingly important concern for the mobile networks of the (near) future. More specifically, as 5G is being deployed at a time when energy efficiency appears as a significant matter for the network ability to take into account and to serve societal and environmental issues, this can play a major role in helping industries to achieve sustainability goals. Within this scope, energy efficiency has recently gained its own role as a performance measure and design constraint for 5G communication networks... [more]

The built environment is the global sector with the greatest energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, building energy savings can make a major contribution to tackling the current energy and climate change crises. Fluid dynamics models have long supported the understanding and optimization of building energy systems and have been responsible for many important technological breakthroughs. As Covid-19 is continuing to spread around the world, fluid dynamics models are proving to be more essential than ever for exploring airborne transmission of the coronavirus indoors in order to develop energy-efficient and healthy ventilation actions against Covid-19 risks. The purpose of this paper is to review the most important and influential fluid dynamics models that have contributed to improving building energy efficiency. A detailed, yet understandable description of each model’s background, physical setup, and equations is provided. The main ingredients, theoretical interpretatio... [more]

This paper presents a scientific development aimed at improving the efficiency of turbomachines through the joint use of rotary-vane and vortex workflows. In the well-known Euler turbine, the rotor flow channels represent a set of curved pipes. The authors propose to consider in more detail the possibilities of using such rotating pipes in the implementation of an ejection (vortex) workflow. A hybrid pump was considered with the conclusion that its workflow can be described using two Euler equations. The results of computer simulation indicate that hybrid turbomachines are promising. The use of additive technology allowed the creation of micromodels of the Euler turbine with various rotor designs. Laboratory hydraulic tests showed that the liquid inlet to the rotor is possible in pulse mode. Laboratory tests of micromodels using compressed air showed that gas (or liquid) motion through curved pipes could be carried out from the rotor periphery to its center and then back, albeit throug... [more]

This paper presents a method for evaluating the energy efficiency of pump systems used to transport fluids .It is mainly scientifically applied and engineering-applied in nature and aims to propose a new approach (method) to researchers in their study of the energy efficiency of such systems. By applying the well-known scientific method of Dimensional Analysis (Buckingham π-theorem), dimensionless complexes (π-criterions and their relevant equations, which are original (innovative) and are offered for the first time in the scientific literature), used in accomplishing an energy assessment and analysis of such systems, are obtained. The criterion ∏1 = ev/ρgD represents specific energy consumption in kWh/m3 for a given pipe system with an exemplary diameter D. The criterion ∏2 = Q/[n(Hp − Hst)D2] represents a generalized parameter which is characterized by the selected method of flow rate (Q) regulation for a pump system with given static head Hst—by changing the speed of rotation (VFD,... [more]

To solve the contradiction between achieving long-term economic growth and reducing the consumption of certain types of resources, the concept of sustainable resource saving economic development must be put into practice. The purpose of this research is to establish criteria, develop indicators, and identify factors of the sustainable energy-saving economic development, as well as to test the developed theoretical provisions using the example of natural gas consumption by different countries. To achieve this goal, various methods were used, including economic and mathematical modeling, time series analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, and so on. The criteria were formalized, according to which a certain type of economic development can be attributed to energy saving both at the level of the state economy as a whole and at the level of individual industries and enterprises. It was established that the formalized criteria of the sustainable energy-saving economic development ha... [more]

Environmental pollution, energy supply and security of supply have become major issues across the world due to climate change, limited energy sources, energy price volatility and energy supply constraints. Energy availability, energy efficiency and the replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy sources are key factors in the global development of sustainable energy. In many countries with limited fossil fuel resources, the sustainable development of renewable energy sources is an important tool in reducing dependence on imported fuels. Some alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar, tidal and hydropower, seem almost inexhaustible. With the exception of tidal energy, all of these sources have been used extensively and for a long time. This article examines the improvement of energy security and the government’s actions to promote the use of renewable energy sources, focusing on increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy intensity and dependence on energy imports in Lith... [more]

This paper proposes methodological approaches to assessing the impact of renewable energy and energy efficiency development on emerging economies’ energy security. It is suggested to supplement the current methodology for assessing energy security with the decoupling index of the renewable energy financial burden on the state budget, the energy efficiency decoupling index, the households’ energy poverty indicator, the index of capacity development for balancing electricity generation volumes, and the energy fluctuations indicator. These indices provide a comprehensive assessment of energy security under the latest challenges. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic in the Ukrainian energy sector led to the “green and coal paradox”, when the government decided to keep green electricity generation but limit nuclear generation. It required increased flexible capacities (thermal generation) and led to a rise in electricity prices and environmental pollution. Forecasting energy fluctuations with Butter... [more]

In the last decade, China has sharply tightened the monitoring values for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In some regions with sensitive discharge water bodies, the values (24 h composite sample) must be 1.5 mg/L for NH4-N and 10 mg/L for total nitrogen since 2021. Even with the previously less strict monitoring values, around 50% of the wastewater treatment plants in China were permanently unable to comply with the nitrogen monitoring values. Due to the rapid changes on-site to meet the threshold values and the strong relation to energy-intensive aeration strategies to sufficiently remove nitrogen, WWTPs do not always work energy-efficiently. A Chinese WWTP (450,000 Population equivalents or PE) with upstream denitrification, a tertiary treatment stage for phosphorus removal and disinfection, and aerobic sludge stabilisation was modelled in order to test various concepts for operation optimisation to lower energy consumption while meeting and undercutting effluent requirements. F... [more]

The issues addressed by the article concern the assessment of energy efficiency in rail transport, resulting from the proper organization of rail traffic. The problems related to energy consumption and, thus, the negative impact of rail transport on the natural environment are highly significant in terms of the green deal concept, climate change and sustainable development. In this article, energy efficiency is investigated in the context of minimizing the energy consumption necessary to satisfy a specific transport requirement. The essence of this article is to present an approach to energy-efficient planning of rail freight traffic. This article aims to develop a method covers the allocation of railway vehicles dedicated to freight traffic (locomotives and railcars) to perform a defined transport task, taking into account the energy efficiency assessment of the solution, routing the train launched with regard to the accomplishment of the defined transport task on the railway network,... [more]

The Belt and Road investment involves a large number of renewable energy projects, but whether the energy efficiency is linked to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation has yet to be established in the literature. This research attempts to close this gap by looking at how the BRI affects the energy efficiency of participating nations after the fact through a counterfactual analysis. Based on the Difference-in-Difference-in-Difference (DDD) and quantile DID methods for the panel dataset covering 178 nations and areas for the period of 2002 to 2018, we explored the impacts of BRI on energy efficiency vary by different energy efficiency quantiles, resource endowments, and income levels. First, the positive effects of BRI are significant in medium-and high-energy efficiency quantiles but are not significant in low-energy efficiency quantiles for up to 30%. Second, the BRI tends to increase more energy efficiencies in resource-rich BRI countries than those in resource-poor BRI count... [more]

Internet of Things (IoT) is a developing technology for supporting heterogeneous physical objects into smart things and improving the individuals living using wireless communication systems. Recently, many smart healthcare systems are based on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to collect and analyze the data for infectious diseases, i.e., body fever, flu, COVID-19, shortness of breath, etc. with the least operation cost. However, the most important research challenges in such applications are storing the medical data on a secured cloud and make the disease diagnosis system more energy efficient. Additionally, the rapid explosion of IoMT technology has involved many cyber-criminals and continuous attempts to compromise medical devices with information loss and generating bogus certificates. Thus, the increase in modern technologies for healthcare applications based on IoMT, securing health data, and offering trusted communication against intruders is gaining much research attention.... [more]

According to the European Union (EU) regulations, EU members are obligated, among others, to improve the energy efficiency in the outdoor lighting sector. One of the ways to consider this fact is to install LED sources in luminaires. Due to the reasonable lighting requirements for the lighting of squares and parks, the cheapest way to modernize lighting is to replace conventional discharge lamps with LED sources in park luminaires. Using nine typical park luminaires, the influence of replacing classic sodium lamps with LED sources on the effect of light pollution and energy efficiency was analyzed. Using data, such as a photometric solid and a relative spectral distribution, simulation calculations were carried out in DIALux software and our own calculation tool to consider this issue. The studies considered 156 LED sources of different spectral distributions and a wide range of color temperatures from 1000 K to 9753 K as well as different color rendering index (CRI) values. The conduc... [more]

The paper concerns the design and development of large electric energy storage systems made of lithium cells. Most research advances in the development of lithium-ion battery management systems focus solely on safety, functionality, and improvement of the procedures for assessing the performance of systems without considering their energy efficiency. The paper presents an alternative approach to the design and analysis of large modular battery management systems. A modular battery management system and the dedicated wireless communication system were designed to analyze and optimize energy consumption. The algorithms for assembly, reporting, management, and communication procedures described in the paper are a robust design tool for further developing large and scalable battery systems. The conducted analysis of energy efficiency for the exemplary 100S15P system shows that the energy used to power the developed battery management system is comparable to the energy dissipated due to the... [more]

The Office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has reported that, from 2014 to 2018, Thailand’s internet usage has grown six-fold to 3.3 million terabytes per annum. This market trend highlights one of the policies of Thailand 4.0, with the aim of making Thailand a hub for information transfer in ASEAN. As a result, there will be a massive demand growth for data storage facilities in the near future. Data centres are regarded as the brain and heart of the digital industry and are essential for facilitating businesses in organising, processing, storing and disseminating large amounts of data. As the energy demand for equipment cooling contributes to over 37% of the total energy consumption, the data centres of the world’s leading companies, such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, are generally located in cold climate zones, such as Iceland, in order to reduce operating costs for cooling. Due to this reason, the possibility of data centres in Thailand i... [more]

Recent developments in micro-grids have led to increased interest in DC distribution due to its high efficiency in distributing energy from renewable energy sources to DC loads. This paper seeks to analyse the performance of AC and DC systems in a relatively large-sized 6 kW PV installation to determine the level of improvement in efficiency provided by DC distribution and to identify methods for further improvement. Baseline annual data for the AC system were collected from a live installation on a national school in Inis Oirr, an island off the west coast of Ireland. The results indicate that usage of a DC distribution system has the potential to reduce system losses by up to 50% as well as the ability for an annual saving in grid energy of 5% compared to the existing AC system. Moreover, the analysis reveals that DC outperforms AC distribution more in spring and autumn, when power consumption is comparable to the system production, but there is less impact in summer, when PV product... [more]

Huge efforts have been made in recent decades to improve energy saving in the building sector, particularly focused on the role of façades. Among the explored viable solutions, climate-adaptive building shells [CABS] consider promising solutions to control solar radiation, both in terms of illuminance and heating levels, but are still piloting these solutions due to their complex designs and necessary costs. The present study aims to provide a speedy but reliable methodology to evaluate the potential impacts of adopting active/passive CABS systems during the preliminary design stage. The proposed methodology allows the evaluation and comparison, when multiple options are considered, of the effects of each solution in terms of the energy needs, thermal comfort and lighting, while reducing the required effort and time for an extensive analysis of the overall building level. This is based on the use of a “virtual test room” where different conditions and configurations can be explored. A... [more]

Small commercial buildings, or those comprising less than 50,000 square feet of floor area, represent 94% of U.S commercial buildings by count and consume approximately 8% of the nation’s primary energy; as such, they represent a largely unexploited opportunity for energy savings. Small commercial buildings also represent a large economic market—the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) estimated the small commercial retrofit market at USD 35.6 billion. Despite the prominence of small commercial buildings and the economic opportunity for energy retrofits, many energy efficiency programs focus on large commercial buildings, and create efficiency solutions that do not meet the needs of the small commercial market. This paper presents an analysis of 34 small commercial case study projects that implemented energy efficiency retrofits. This paper contributes to the existing building retrofit body of knowledge in the following ways: (1) it identifies the decision criteria used by sm... [more]

The climate of Houston, classified as a humid subtropical climate with tropical influences, makes the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems the largest electricity consumers in buildings. HVAC systems in commercial buildings are usually operated by a centralized control system and/or an energy management system based on a fixed schedule and scheduled control of a zone setpoint, which is not appropriate for many buildings with changing occupancy rates. Lately, as part of energy efficiency analysis, attention has focused on collecting and analyzing smart meters and building-related data, as well as applying supervised learning techniques, to propose new strategies to operate HVAC systems and reduce energy consumption. On the other hand, unsupervised learning techniques have been used to study the consumption information and profile characterization of different buildings after cluster analysis is performed. This paper adopts a different approach by revealing the power... [more]

Electrification is an efficient way to decarbonize by replacing fossil fuels with low-emission power. In addition, energy efficiency measures can reduce consumption, making it easier to shift to a zero-carbon society. In Québec, upgrades to aging buildings that employ electric resistance heating offer a unique opportunity to free up large amounts of hydroelectricity that can serve to decarbonize heating in other buildings. However, another source of energy would be needed to electrify mobility because efficiency measures free up small amounts of electricity in summer compared to winter. This study reveals how building efficiency measures combined with solar electricity generation provide an energy profile that matches the requirements for decarbonizing both mobility and heating. The TRNSYS software was used to simulate the annual energy performance of an existing house and retrofitted/rebuilt low-energy houses equipped with a photovoltaic (PV) roof in Montreal, Québec, Canada (45.5° N)... [more]

The efficiency of a photovoltaic (PV) panels drops significantly in dusty environments. The variation in temperature could have a substantial impact on PV panel cells, which could further lead to high deterioration and eventually permanent damage to the PV material in the presence of dust. To resolve this issue, in this work a novel hydrophobic silicon dioxide (SiO2)-based nanoparticle coating is proposed for the PV panel, to shrink the surface stress developed between the water and the coated facet. Two identical PV modules were installed to conduct comparable experimental tests simultaneously. The first module is coated by the SiO2 nanoparticles, and the second is uncoated and used as a reference. To maintain coherency, the experiments are done in the same environmental conditions, cleaning the PV modules at regular intervals. Results reveal that the accumulated energy generated during this period of study was comprehensively enhanced. Moreover, the self-cleaning property of the hydr... [more]

The solid waste of Rapana thomasiana seashells both from domestic activities and natural waste on seashore can be used to obtain viable products for medical applications. However, conventional technologies applied for sintering the materials require massive energy consumption due to the resistance heating. Microwave heating represents an advanced technology for sintering, but the stability of the process, in terms of thermal runaway and microwave plasma arc discharge, jeopardizes the quality of the sintered products. This paper aims to present the results of research focused on viable heating technology and the mechanical properties of the final products. A comparative analysis, in terms of energy efficiency vs. mechanical properties, has been performed for three different heating technologies: direct microwave heating, hybrid microwave heating and resistance heating. The results obtained concluded that the hybrid microwave heating led to final products from Rapana thomasiana solid was... [more]

There has been increasing interest in reducing carbon footprints globally in recent years. Hence increasing share of green energy and energy efficiency are promoted by governments. Therefore, optimizing energy consumption is becoming more critical for people, companies, industries, and the environment. Predicting energy consumption more precisely means that future energy management planning can be more effective. To date, most research papers have focused on predicting residential building energy consumption; however, a large portion of the energy is consumed by industrial machines. Prediction of energy consumption of large industrial machines in real time is challenging due to concept drift, in which prediction performance deteriorates over time. In this research, a novel data-driven method multi-regime approach (MRA) was developed to better predict the energy consumption for industrial machines. Whereas most papers have focused on finding an excellent prediction model that contradict... [more]