Strengthening The Grid

Americans' safety, productivity, comfort, and convenience depend on the reliable supply of electric power. The electric power system is a complex "cyber-physical" system composed of a network of millions of components spread out across the continent. These components are owned, operated, and regulated by thousands of different entities. Power system operators work hard to assure safe and reliable service, but large outages occasionally happen. Given the nature of the system, there is simply no way that outages can be completely avoided, no matter how much time and money is devoted to such an effort. The system's reliability and resilience can be improved but never made perfect. Thus, system owners, operators, and regulators must prioritize their investments based on potential benefits. Enhancing the Resilience of the Nation's Electricity System focuses on identifying, developing, and implementing strategies to increase the power system's resilience in the face of events that can cause large-area, long-duration outages: blackouts that extend over multiple service areas and last several days or longer. Resilience is not just about lessening the likelihood that these outages will occur. It is also about limiting the scope and impact of outages when they do occur, restoring power rapidly afterwards, and learning from these experiences to better deal with events in the future.

The two volumes IFIP AICT 551 and 552 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 9.4 International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, ICT4D 2019, held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in May 2019. The 97 revised full papers and 2 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 185 submissions. The papers present a wide range of perspectives and disciplines including (but not limited to) public administration, entrepreneurship, business administration, information technology for development, information management systems, organization studies, philosophy, and management. They are organized in the following topical sections: communities, ICT-enabled networks, and development; digital platforms for development; ICT for displaced population and refugees. How it helps? How it hurts?; ICT4D for the indigenous, by the indigenous and of the indigenous; local technical papers; pushing the boundaries - new research methods, theory and philosophy in ICT4D; southern-driven human-computer interaction; sustainable ICT, informatics, education and learning in a turbulent world - "doing the safari way”.

This book is intended to raise awareness about the use of sustainable Textile-Reinforced Mortar (TRM) composite systems, including plant fibers, for civil engineering applications. It presents a comprehensive characterization of the mechanical properties of Flax-TRM composite systems when used for strengthening masonry elements. Moreover, it reports on a physical and mechanical characterization of the single components, such as the textile and mortar one. In turn, it describes tensile tests on the composite and shear bond tests on Flax-TRM-to-masonry substrate elements, carried out for the purpose of analyzing the composite material and its adherence behavior with a brick masonry element. It also reports on the analysis of the contribution of the reinforcement system on the shear capacity of masonry elements, carried out via diagonal compression tests. Last but not least, the book reports on some innovative solutions for improving the mechanical performance of the reinforcement system, e.g., by treating the fiber or modifying the matrix mix design, discussing the experimental findings in detail. All in all, this book offers extensive information on the use of plant fibers as reinforcement in TRM systems, specifically highlighting the potential of this composite as strengthening strategy for various civil engineering applications. Moreover, it defines key mechanical aspects of the composite that must be taken into consideration for increasing the efficiency of the reinforcing system. Last but not least, the book describes some technical solutions aimed at an overall improvement of the structural performance of sustainable textile-reinforced composite.

The integration of new sources of energy like wind power, solar-power, small-scale generation, or combined heat and power in the power grid is something that impacts a lot of stakeholders: network companies (both distribution and transmission), the owners and operators of the DG units, other end-users of the power grid (including normal consumers like you and me) and not in the least policy makers and regulators. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the impact of DG on the power grid, with one side (including mainly some but certainly not all, network companies) claiming that the lights will go out soon, whereas the other side (including some DG operators and large parks of the general public) claiming that there is nothing to worry about and that it's all a conspiracy of the large production companies that want to protect their own interests and keep the electricity price high. The authors are of the strong opinion that this is NOT the way one should approach such an important subject as the integration of new, more environmentally friendly, sources of energy in the power grid. With this book the authors aim to bring some clarity to the debate allowing all stakeholders together to move to a solution. This book will introduce systematic and transparent methods for quantifying the impact of DG on the power grid.

An in-depth examination of large scale wind projects and electricity production in China Presents the challenges of electrical power system planning, design, operation and control carried out by large scale wind power, from the Chinese perspective Focuses on the integration issue of large scale wind power to the bulk power system, probing the interaction between wind power and bulk power systems Wind power development is a burgeoning area of study in developing countries, with much interest in offshore wind farms and several big projects under development English translation of the Chinese language original which won the "Fourth China Outstanding Publication Award nomination" in March 2013

This book analyses the current knowledge on structural behaviour of RC elements and structures strengthened with composite materials (experimental, analytical and numerical approaches for EBR and NSM), particularly in relation to the above topics, and the comparison of the predictions of the current available codes/recommendations/guidelines with selected experimental results. The book shows possible critical issues (discrepancies, lacunae, relevant parameters, test procedures, etc.) related to current code predictions or to evaluate their reliability, in order to develop more uniform methods and basic rules for design and control of FRP strengthened RC structures. General problems/critical issues are clarified on the basis of the actual experiences, detect discrepancies in existing codes, lacunae in knowledge and, concerning these identified subjects, provide proposals for improvements. The book will help to contribute to promote and consolidate a more qualified and conscious approach towards rehabilitation and strengthening existing RC structures with composites and their possible monitoring.

This book collected from papers presented on the 6th International Conference on Mechanics of Masonry Structures Strengthened With Composite Materials (MuRiCo6, June 26-28, 2019, Bologna, Italy). The aim of this collection is to present and review the latest achievements in modelling, testing and controlling masonry structures strengthened with composite materials. The innovative strengthening apparatus here considered consists of composites with continuous fibres (carbon, steel, basalt, aramid, glass, PBO? etc.) reinforcing polymer or inorganic matrices. The special problems regarding the strengthening of monumental historic constructions, considering appropriate techniques in the domain of architecture structural conservation, are focused in many scientific articles authored by eminent scientists.