With the energy and environmental problems becoming increasingly serious, human power, as a pervasive, renewable, mobile and environment friendly energy, draws more and more attention over the world. In this paper, the most basic features of human power are presented. The currently available human power harvesting theories and devices are briefly reviewed and compared. Further, direct or indirect utilization of human power in daily life, especially transportation and home appliances, such as human-powered car, watercraft, aircraft, washing machine and television etc. are summarized. Considering that the total energy from an individual is rather limited, as previously focused by most of the former works, it is conceived in this paper that an important future for large scale use of human powers lies in the efficient conversion, collection and storage of such energy from discrete people and then use it later on as desired. With the huge amount of energy gathered, the application category of human power would be significantly expended. Starting from this point, three technical ways towards efficiently utilizing human power are sketched, which are termed as human-powered grid (HPG), human-powered charger (HPC) and human-powered storage (HPS), among which, HPG is capable of collecting the electric power produced by each individual at different regions and thus can supply unique and flexible power to the customers covered in the area, without relying on the conventional electricity grid. The HPC can then charge various kinds of electrical devices instantly by a human driven generator which converts human power into electricity. Finally, the HPS can store electricity in time for later use. In this way, even for the devices requiring electricity that is strong enough, the collected human power can also serve as its reliable energy source. Meanwhile, utilization of human power becomes rather convenient and timely which guarantees its practical value. It is expected that with further research and increasing applications, human power could partially relieve the current global electricity shortage and environmental issues via its pervasive contribution.

The frequency of the power system varies based on the load pattern of the consumers. With continuous increase in the load, the frequency of the system keeps decreasing and may reach its minimum allowable limits. Further increase in the load will result in more frequency drop leading to the need of load shedding, if excess generation is not available to cater the need. This paper proposed a methodology in a hybrid thermal-hydro system for finding the required amount of load to be shed for setting the frequency of the system within its minimum allowable limits. The load shedding steps were obtained based on the rate of change of frequency with the increase in the load in both areas. The impact of superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) was obtained on load shedding scheme. The comparison of the results was presented on the two-area system.

In this paper, a new sensorless interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) drives method with extended Kalman filter (EKF) for speed, rotor position and load torque estimation is proposed. The direct torque control (DTC) technique for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is receiving increasing attention due to the important advantages of the low dependence on motor parameters when compared with other motor control techniques. The Kalman filter is an observer for linear and non-linear systems and is based on the stochastic intromission, in others words, noise. The PMSM is fed by an indirect power electronic converter which is controlled by a sliding mode technique. The simulation tests performed for different operating conditions have confirmed the robustness of the overall system; and it is shown that the sliding mode technique has successfully minimized the different harmonics introduced by the line converter.

In this paper the invasive weed optimization algorithm has been applied to a variety of economic dispatch (ED) problems. The ED problem is concerned with minimizing the fuel cost by optimally loading the electrical generators which are committed to supply a given demand. Some involve prohibited operating zones, transmission losses and valve point loading. In general, they are non-linear non-convex optimization problems which cannot be directly solved by conventional methods. In this work the invasive weed algorithm, a meta-heuristic method inspired by the proliferation of weeds, has been applied to four numerical examples and has resulted in promising solutions compared to published results.

In this paper, the objective of minimum load balancing index (LBI) for the 16-bus distribution system is achieved using bacterial foraging optimization algorithm (BFOA). The feeder reconfiguration problem is formulated as a non-linear optimization problem and the optimal solution is obtained using BFOA. With the proposed reconfiguration method, the radial structure of the distribution system is retained and the burden on the optimization technique is reduced. Test results are presented for the 16-bus sample network, the proposed reconfiguration method has effectively decreased the LBI, and the BFOA technique is efficient in searching for the optimal solution.

In this paper, wind velocities and directions (sea and land) are recorded in different days and times. The data collected were compared with the weather data from the Brunei Darussalam Meteorological Service (BDMS) and the findings of other researchers and were found to be in good agreement. The potential of wind energy is predicted from the available data collected. The average generated power (forenoon and afternoon) is found to be 25 (mean) and 18 W (median), 101 (mean) and 73 W (median), 912 (mean) and 660 W (median), 10137 (mean) and 7331 W (median) for a rotor with a diameter of 2.5, 5, 15 and 50 m, respectively. The power density P_d for wind farming is found to be 0.26 (mean) and 0.19 (median), 0.31 (mean) and 0.22 (median) for the rotor whose diameter is 2.5 and 50 m, respectively, while the average P_d values are found to be 0.28 (mean) and 0.2 (median) for the rotor whose diameter is 5 and 15 m.

Based on the variable heat capacities of the working fluid, the irreversibility coming from the compression and expansion processes, and the heat leak losses through the cylinder wall, an irreversible cycle model of the Miller heat engine was established, from which expressions for the efficiency and work output of the cycle were derived. The performance characteristic curves of the Miller heat engine were generated through numerical calculation, from which the optimal regions of some main parameters such as the work output, efficiency and pressure ratio were determined. Moreover, the influence of the compression and expansion efficiencies, the variable heat capacities and the heat leak losses on the performance of the cycle was discussed in detail, and consequently, some significant results were obtained.

The progression of ignition was numerically simulated with the aim of realizing a full-scale tiny-oil ignition burner that is identical to the burner used in an 800 MWe utility boiler. The numerical simulations were conducted for four excess air ratios, 0.56, 0.75, 0.98 and 1.14 (corresponding to primary air velocities of 17, 23, 30 and 35 m/s, respectively), which were chosen because they had been used previously in practical experiments. The numerical simulations agreed well with the experimental results, which demonstrate the suitability of the model used in the calculations. The gas temperatures were high along the center line of the burner for the four excess air ratios. The flame spread to the burner wall and the high-temperature region was enlarged in the radial direction along the primary air flow direction. The O₂ concentrations for the four excess air ratios were 0.5%, 1.1%, 0.9% and 3.0% at the exit of the second combustion chamber. The CO peak concentration was very high with values of 7.9%, 9.9%, 11.3% and 10.6% for the four excess air ratios at the exit of the second combustion chamber.