Reducing energy consumptions and CO2 emissions in European countries: a review on legal environment and increasing use of photovoltaic energy for Electric Propulsion Systems

In Europe, the building sector is ranked second in terms of CO2 emissions, just after transport. Particularly, it accounts for 25% of the overall CO2 emissions. Moreover, in order to reduce CO2 emissions, European legislations encourage the use of renewable energies and, among them, particularly the use of PhotoVoltaic (PV) one. This because the connection between the use of PV clean energy and the reduction of CO2 emission is well demonstrated. In this context, the first part of the paper is focused on the regulations related to building energy efficiency while the second part investigates the deployment of PV source all over Europe.

Low cost electrical current sensors with automatic measurement range

We present a simple and low cost Smart Current Sensor with wide automatic measurement range. The logic core system of the sensor is the Atmel AT32UC3C2256C AVR 32-bit microcontroller, the wireless core is a Microchip MRF24J40MA IEEE 802.15.4 RF transceiver[3]. The MCU features 11 ADC multiplexed channels, with 12-bit resolution and sample rate up to 2Msps, two of which can be sampled in parallel. The sensing board consists of two hall-effect based current sensors, assembled on different PCBs in order to perform with different sensitivities. Custom primary conductor design allowed us to sense the current flowing in the conductor with two different sensitivities: the sensor mounted inside the…

An Embedded System for the integration of a Combined Photovoltaic Solar (CPS) system into a ZigBee Home Area Network

In this paper is reported the design and implementation of an electronic system capable of communicating over a standard ZigBee network in order to let a residential gateway collector, named agent, gain access to the parameters of a Combined Photovoltaic and Solar thermal (CPS) plant, thus realizing a networked energy production appliance . The system is made of three parts: a PV metering device, a boiler metering device also capable of controlling a heating resistor embedded within the boiler tank, and a data collector acting as a ZigBee node. The data collector device periodically retrieves the following parameters from the metering devices: instantaneous photovoltaic power production, ac…

Energy Consumption/Generation Model: Data collected, architecture conceived and scenarios addressed

The paper provides the data collected, the architecture and the conceived scenarios for the development of an Energy Consumptions/Generations Model. This model is suitable for the modeling, processing, analyzing and forecasting of energy consumption and generation at home, building and neighborhood level. Data are from the Census Returns, Electoral Registers & Council of the real town of Loughborough (U.K.). The architecture conceived describes the real distribution system which supplies the Loughborough geographic area. The scenarios considered take into account both traditional dwellings (equipped with dumb appliances) and new dwellings (equipped with smart networked appliances) © 2014 IE…

The FP7 BeyWatch European scientific project: general features and design criteria of the Combined Photovoltaic Solar (CPS) system within the BEYWATCH system architecture

This paper includes the general features and design criteria of a combined photovoltaic solar system (CPS) and its allocation within the entire architecture of the BeyWatch system. The CPS main functionalities and characteristics, the description of the CPS main components and the CPS electronic control and monitoring subsystem, together with the description of the Firmware design and communication protocols are here reported. The Combined Photovoltaic and Solar system (CPS) is a Renewable Energy system that produces thermal and electrical energy and the design has been based on a modular approach.

An Electronic Emulator of Combined Photovoltaic and Solar Thermal Systems

An emulator of combined Photovoltaic and Solar Thermal (CPS) systems is presented. In order to carry out early testing on the design of such systems, a - microcontrolled based - hardware board has been designed, implemented and tested. This emulator is able run several typical daily solar irradiation patterns as a function of the seasons and a complete solar thermal and photovoltaic model that depends on a very flexible set of parameters characterizing the real CPS behaviour. By properly varying these parameters many different CPS models can easily be created and tailored to the energy performance needed for a predefined target application. Beside these functionalities, the CPS emulator is …

A Novel Wireless Sensor Network for Electric Power Metering

Wireless sensor network with lightweight and efficient communication infrastructures are today a great interest, both at research and industrial level, as they are the basis for reliable monitoring services. Mesh networks are ideal candidates in this scenario, as they can be very fault-tolerant. After introducing wireless network systems requirements, we show the design of a mesh network routing protocol based on AODV schemas. Its implementation runs on top of low-cost off-the-shelf components, and allowed us to build a custom power meter wireless sensor node.

Pathological voice analysis via digital signal processing

The interest in pathological voice analysis for specific neurological diseases is growing up aiming to offer more Health-care tele monitoring services since new high performing electronic devices are available for the end-user. In this article we show some parameters that can be digitally extracted and analyzed from pathological voices, in order to find a distinctive sign of the Parkinson disease. As a result, we will show a parameter that gives some information about the Parkinson disease characterization, particularly for male patients. We will also discuss about the needed computational cost related to parameters extraction and elaboration, aiming to target a possible tough yet portable …

STUDIO DELL’INDIVIDUAZIONE DEL PARKINSON TRAMITE ANALISI DELLE CARATTERISTICHE VOCALI ATTRAVERSO METODI DI OTTIMIZAZIONE STOCASTICA

Benefit at Grid Level by Using DoS Actions via Combined Photovoltaic and Solar Panel System

A Novel Wireless Sensor Network for Electric Power Metering

Wireless sensor network with lightweight and efficient communication infrastructures are today a great interest, both at research and industrial level, as they are the basis for reliable monitoring services. Mesh networks are ideal candidates in this scenario, as they can be very fault-tolerant. After introducing wireless network systems requirements, we show the design of a mesh network routing protocol based on AODV schemas. Its implementation runs on top of low-cost off-the-shelf components, and allowed us to build a custom power meter wireless sensor node.