Volume 61 (2010): Issue 1 (January 2010)

This paper presents a systematic techno-economic analysis of autonomous PV-Diesel energy system with battery storage. This hybrid type power system was developed and installed on the roof of the Electrical Engineering Laboratory building in the city of Xanthi, Greece, where a weather station is also installed providing necessary meteorological data since 2002. Such system can be generally used to supply electrical loads of isolated remote areas. The actual design of such a system is based on: a pre-defined load pattern to be supplied; the pertinent weather data; the relevant market prices; and the applicable recent economic rates (eg June 2009 for the Greek case). The system is operated on a predictive manner using a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) which controls the main system parameters for safe and continuous power supply to meet reliably the desired load demand. Three distinct systems of this type and of equal capacity, which combine energy sources and battery storage have been proposed and assessed technically and economically.

The paper deals with simulating the circumstances of switching surge and trigger current at switching-in of the T402 autotransformer recently installed in Križovany, with the tests conducted by means of ATP (Alternative Transient Program) simulation software for simulating transient electromagnetic phenomena. The target has been to determine temporal curves for the most critical surge instances against earth and between the phases and the curves for trigger current with and without surge limiters connected, and to determine by means of simulations the size and statistical frequency of switching surges and based on a controlled switching simulation, to describe the elimination of transient phenomena during the process and in reference to the simulations and to operating manual for the PSD02 Siemens control unit, suggest the required configuration settings for the unit.

Security policies have different components; firewall, active directory, and IDS are some examples of these components. Enforcement of network security policies to low level security mechanisms faces some essential difficulties. Consistency, verification, and maintenance are the major ones of these difficulties. One approach to overcome these difficulties is to automate the process of translation of high level security policy into low level security mechanisms. This paper introduces a framework of an automation process that translates a high level security policy into low level security mechanisms. The framework is described in terms of three phases; in the first phase all network assets are categorized according to their roles in the network security and relations between them are identified to constitute the network security model. This proposed model is based on organization based access control (OrBAC). However, the proposed model extend the OrBAC model to include not only access control policy but also some other administrative security policies like auditing policy. Besides, the proposed model enables matching of each rule of the high level security policy with the corresponding ones of the low level security policy. Through the second phase of the proposed framework, the high level security policy is mapped into the network security model. The second phase could be considered as a translation of the high level security policy into an intermediate model level. Finally, the intermediate model level is translated automatically into low level security mechanism. The paper illustrates the applicability of proposed approach through an application example.

The recent developments in semiconductors and control equipment have made the voltage source converter based high voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) feasible. This new DC transmission is known as "HVDC Light or "HVDC Plus by leading vendors. Due to the use of VSC technology and pulse width modulation (PWM) the VSC-HVDC has a number of potential advantages as compared with classic HVDC. In this paper, the scenario of back-to-back VSC-HVDC link connecting two adjacent asynchronous AC networks is studied. Control strategy is implemented and its dynamic performances during disturbances are investigated in MATLAB/Simulink program. The simulation results have shown good performance of the proposed system under balanced and unbalanced fault conditions.

Torque pulsations have prominent effects on the performance of brushless permanent- magnet (PM) machines. There are different sources of torque ripples in PM motors. These torque pulsations depend on the shape of the flux density distribution in the airgap region. For predicting the open-circuit airgap field distribution in brushless PM motors, a two dimensional (2-D) analytical method, in which the direction of magnetization, either radial or parallel and the effect of the stator slot-openings are taken into account, is used. The method uses an improved 2-D permeance model. In order to evaluate the accuracy of this method, a 2-D time-stepping FEM coupled with the two motion equations is used. A 3-phase, 36-slot, 4-pole, 5 HP, brushless PM motor is modeled by two methods. In this analysis both, the radial and parallel magnetization of the brushless motor are considered. The results obtained by the analytical method are compared with those obtained by FE analysis that shows the valuable accuracy of the analytical method for performance calculations in design and optimization processes.

The principal aim of the paper is to present a possible approach to the design of simple Proportional-Integral (PI) robust controllers and subsequently to demonstrate their applicability during control of a laboratory model with uncertain parameters through the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) SIMATIC S7-300 by Siemens Company. The proposed and utilized synthesis consists of two steps. The former one is determination of controller parameters area, which ensures the robustly stable control loop and is based on computing/plotting the stability boundary locus while the latter one lies in the final choice of the controller itself relying on algebraic techniques. The basic theoretical parts are followed by laboratory experiments in which the 3rd order nonlinear electronic model has been successfully controlled in various working points.

One possible application of the multiple-output electronically-tunable active building block as a universal filter with distributed feedback structure is presented. The suggested structure is less conventional than the well-known state-variable Kerwin-Huelsman-Newcomb but allows the same filter configurations with the similar properties. The major current-mode design approach disadvantage, ie, the necessity of multiple current outputs, is demonstrated. To date even a rather big line of the commercially available devices do not solve this problem. Some features of the active block used for modelling and transistor-level simulation are briefly discussed. The obvious chance for electronic tuning of the proposed filter is verified.

Voice changing has many applications in the industry and commercial filed. This paper emphasizes voice conversion using a pitch shifting method which depends on detecting the pitch of the signal (fundamental frequency) using Simplified Inverse Filter Tracking (SIFT) and changing it according to the target pitch period using time stretching with Pitch Synchronous Over Lap Add Algorithm (PSOLA), then resampling the signal in order to have the same play rate. The same study was performed to see the effect of voice conversion when some Arabic speech signal is considered. Treatment of certain Arabic voiced vowels and the conversion between male and female speech has shown some expansion or compression in the resulting speech. Comparison in terms of pitch shifting is presented here. Analysis was performed for a single frame and a full segmentation of speech.

For correct quantitative interpretation of Auger spectra of group III-nitrides and their alloys it is necessary to have the relative sensitivity factors of elements and the sputtering yields measured for the material under analysis. These data are not available in the literature for those materials. In this work, the quantities have been determined experimentally that are needed for reliable and precise quantitative interpretation of Auger spectra of such materials, thus of AlN, GaN and their ternary alloys Al_xGa₁-_xN. Measurements of reference AlN and GaN samples allowed to find the elemental sensitivity factors for these nitrides, and measurements on reference samples of ternary alloys Al_xGa₁-_xN allowed to find the ratio of the component sputtering yields, Y_Ga/Y_Al. It has been confirmed that if the relative sensitivity factors are obtained from measurements of reference samples of group III-nitrides, thus of compounds, and if in the alloys of such compounds no further change of the shapes of Auger peaks occurs, the both the areas below the Auger peaks in direct spectra and the Auger peak-to-peak heights in differentiated spectra can be used for quantitative analysis.