Marcus Brazil

Optimal charging of electric vehicles taking distribution network constraints into account

The increasing uptake of electric vehicles suggests that vehicle charging will have a significant impact on the electricity grid. Finding ways to shift this charging to off-peak periods has been recognized as a key challenge for integration of electric vehicles into the electricity grid on a large scale. In this paper, electric vehicle charging is formulated as a receding horizon optimization problem that takes into account the present and anticipated constraints of the distribution network over a finite charging horizon. The constraint set includes transformer and line limitations, phase unbalance, and voltage stability within the network. By using a linear approximation of voltage drop within the network, the problem solution may be computed repeatedly in near real time, and thereby take into account the dynamic nature of changing demand and vehicle arrival and departure. It is shown that this linear approximation of the network constraints is quick to compute, while still ensuring that network constraints are respected. The approach is demonstrated on a validated model of a real network via simulations that use real vehicle travel profiles and real demand data. Using the optimal charging method, high percentages of vehicle uptake can be sustained in existing networks without requiring any further network upgrades, leading to more efficient use of existing assets and savings for the consumer.

Translational packing of arbitrary polytopes

We present an efficient solution method for packing d-dimensional polytopes within the bounds of a polytope container. The central geometric operation of the method is an exact one-dimensional translation of a given polytope to a position which minimizes its volume of overlap with all other polytopes. We give a detailed description and a proof of a simple algorithm for this operation in which one only needs to know the set of (d-1)-dimensional facets in each polytope. Handling non-convex polytopes or even interior holes is a natural part of this algorithm. The translation algorithm is used as part of a local search heuristic and a meta-heuristic technique, guided local search, is used to escape local minima. Additional details are given for the three-dimensional case and results are reported for the problem of packing polyhedra in a rectangular parallelepiped. Utilization of container space is improved by an average of more than 14 percentage points compared to previous methods. The translation algorithm can also be used to solve the problem of maximizing the volume of intersection of two polytopes given a fixed translation direction. For two polytopes with complexity O(n) and O(m) and a fixed dimension, the running time is O(nmlog(nm)) for both the minimization and maximization variants of the translation algorithm.

Canonical forms and algorithms for steiner trees in uniform orientation metrics

AbstractWe present some fundamental structural properties for minimum length networks (known as Steiner minimum trees) interconnecting a given set of points in an environment in which edge segments are restricted to λ uniformly oriented directions. We show that the edge segments of any full component of such a tree contain a total of at most four directions if λ is not a multiple of 3, or six directions if λ is a multiple of 3. This result allows us to develop useful canonical forms for these full components. The structural properties of these Steiner minimum trees are then used to resolve an important open problem in the area: does there exist a polynomial time algorithm for constructing a Steiner minimum tree if the topology of the tree is known? We obtain a simple linear time algorithm for constructing a Steiner minimum tree for any given set of points and a given Steiner topology.

Minimum Networks in Uniform Orientation Metrics

In this paper we use the variational method to systematically study properties of minimum networks connecting any given set of points (called terminals) in a

Optimising declines in underground mines

\lambda

Optimisation in Underground Mining

-plane, in which all lines are in

Hyperbolic Positioning Using RIPS Measurements for Wireless Sensor Networks

\lambda

Bayesian node localisation in wireless sensor networks

uniform orientations

Electric vehicle charging and grid constraints: Comparing distributed and centralized approaches

i\pi /\lambda\ (0\le i<\lambda )

Gradient-constrained minimum networks. I. Fundamentals

. We prove a number of angle conditions for Steiner minimum