Tetsuo Tezuka

Optimal use of coal for power generation in India

Abstract There is growing consensus among energy planners that electricity requirements in India would increase rapidly in the next couple of decades, and that coal would continue to dominate the generating capacity mix. Comparatively high levels of ash in Indian coal causes concern both in terms of the high costs of coal movement and the associated environmental impacts. As per the notification of September 1997, all power plants located in sensitive areas, metropolitan cities and in areas distant from the coalfields, must use coal with

Development of Machine-Maintenance Training System in Virtual Environment

The periodical inspection of nuclear power plants is indispensable in their operations. However, it requires a lot of workforces with a high degree of technical skill in assembling and disassembling various sorts of machines in hazardous environment. In this study the authors are developing a machine-maintenance training system in a virtual environment which can be used easily by novice users. In this paper, the system configuration is outlined, and proposed is a method for representing assembly and disassembly procedures by using Petri net.

Carbon tax for subsidizing photovoltaic power generation systems and its effect on carbon dioxide emissions

This paper proposes a new framework for evaluating quantitatively the effect of carbon taxation. In this study, the tax revenues are supposed to be used only as a subsidy for installing Photovoltaic Power Generation (PV) Systems on houses. The evaluation model developed in this study comprises three sequential modules. The first module is for estimating the demand for the PV system under the subsidy and the carbon taxation policy, the second is the module for life-cycle inventory analysis based on the modified Input-Output table, and the third is the module for calculating the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions from the final-demand vector of the Input-Output table. Major findings of this study are as follows: (1) The amount of CO2-emission reduction increases by advertising the PV system with subsidy policy even under the same tax-rate. (2) The CO2-payback time of the PV system reduces by half if the GDP is assumed not to change after the introduction of carbon taxation.

Methods of determining introduction limits of dispersed generation systems in a distribution system

Recently, there has been growing interest in utilizing DGS (dispersed generation systems) to integrate various generation resources and to meet changing electricity demand. In the long term, as much more introduction of both small- and large-capacity DGSs into the distribution system is expected, complete integration of this new technology into the utility system will bring about changes of design strategy and structural makeup of the system. Thus, a study is necessary to determine the introduction limit of DGS into the traditional distribution system without any facility change. In this paper, the authors propose methods of determining the introduction limits of DGS from the viewpoint of voltage regulation in distribution systems using LRT (load-ratio control transformer) and LDC (line drop compensator) as the control scheme.

A study on design support system for constructing machine-maintenance training environment based on virtual reality technology

A design support system has been developed for constructing a VR-based training environment for machine maintenance work. The features of the developed design support system are: 1) users can construct various training environments under a GUI environment, 2) the users need not have any expert knowledge about computer programming, 3) a Petri net model is utilized for representing the state transition of objects in the virtual environment, and 4) the constructed environment can be easily changed and reused. In this report, the system configuration, how to model the state transition of objects with a Petri net and the results of system validation experiments are described.

Household Solid Waste Management in Jakarta, Indonesia: A Socio-Economic Evaluation

Rapid population growth in Jakarta has posed serious challenges. The urban population is expected to increase by 65% by 2030 compared to its level in 2006 (ADB, 2006). This condition presents a serious challenge for the management of waste in urban areas. The major urban centres in Indonesia produce nearly 10 million tonnes of waste annually, and this amount increases by 2 to 4% annually (Ministry of Environment, 2008). Jakarta uses a major landfill located at Bantar Gebang in the suburban town of Bekasi, and the landfill only absorbs approximately 6,000 tonnes per day. As the capacity of the landfill decreases over time, the waste service providers – in particular, the government  are confronted with the need to reorganise the present system for the treatment and management of solid waste. However, the issue of proper waste management is not just a government task but is a shared responsibility that includes the citizens and households of Jakarta, who are the main end-users of waste management facilities and services. When reorganising solid waste management systems, understanding the role of households, their attitudes, their waste handling practices and their interactions with other actors in the waste system is therefore essential (Oosterveer et al, 2010; Oberlin, 2011).

Market power and trading strategies on the electricity market: a market design view

In this paper, we examine auction-based electricity markets from the viewpoint of a power company in order to evaluate the market design. Optimal trading strategies under uncertainty are developed by abolishing the widespread assumption that a single company has no influence on the market price. The resulting trading strategies explain the high prices and the high volatility observed in real electricity auction markets and show to what extent power companies can manipulate the market price. From these trading strategies, we derive critical points in market design and formulate necessary and sufficient conditions that characterize a competitive electricity auction market. Unfortunately, these conditions are far from being realizable in practice, from which follows that electricity auction markets cannot be competitive

Development of machine-maintenance training system in virtual environment

The periodical inspection of nuclear power plants is indispensable in their operations. However, it requires a lot of workforces with a high degree of technical skill in assembling and disassembling various sorts of machines in hazardous environment. In this study the authors are developing a machine-maintenance training system in a virtual environment which can be used easily by novice users. In this paper, the system configuration is outlined, and proposed is a method for representing assembly and disassembly procedures by using Petri net.

A research on tele-operation using virtual reality

Nowadays an idea of tele-existence or tele-presence that is based on the virtual reality technology has been proposed and is expected to be very effective for performing tasks in hazardous environments, such as a nuclear power plant. In our research we study the fundamental technique of tele-operation using virtual reality technology to manipulate the robot-arm in the nuclear power plant. This paper discusses quantitative evaluation of the properties of human in virtual space, i.e., the aggravation of the operability of the robot-arm manipulation system caused by the time lag in manipulating it, and the accuracy of stereoscopic viewing in virtual space.

Effect of a Photovoltaic Power Generation System on Power Plant Mix

Abstract In this paper, by using real data of electricity load and output of Photovoltaic Power Generation system(PV system), the effect of PV system on power plant mix is evaluated mainly from the viewpoints of power reduction and capacity replacement in the conventional power generation system. For the purpose of this evaluation first, we examine statistically periodic variation and random variation in both the output of PV system and the load, including relationship between them. Second, referring to the result of this statistical analysis, a probabilistic load model is built in which the output of PV system and the electricity load are treated as mutually correlated random variables. Due to this probabilistic model, a load-duration curve(LDC) is derived for the power system equipped with PV system Finally, the result obtained from an optimal power plant mix with this LDC is compared with that obtained from the LDC of power system without PV system. The study is earned out by using the real data of electricity load, solar radiation and daily average temperature in the Kansai region, Japan.