Optimal dispatch approach for rural multi-energy supply systems considering virtual energy storage

In response to the underutilization of energy and insufficient flexible operation capability of rural energy supply systems in China,this study proposes an optimal dispatch approach for a rural multi-energy supply system(RMESS)considering virtual energy storage(VES).First,to enable the flexible utilization of rural biomass resources and the thermal inertia of residential building envelopes,this study constructed VES-I and VES-II models that describe electrical-thermal and electrical-gas coupling from an electrical viewpoint.Subsequently,an RMESS model encompassing these two types of VES was formulated.This model delineates the intricate interplay of multi-energy components within the RMESS framework and facilitates the precise assessment of the adjustable potential for optimizing RMESS operations.Based on the above models,a day-ahead optimal dispatch model for an RMESS considering a VES is proposed to achieve optimal economic performance while ensuring efficient energy allocation.Comparative simulations validated the effectiveness of the VES modeling and the day-ahead optimal dispatch approach for the RMESS.

AVirtual Cloud Storage Architecture for Enhanced Data Security

The sensitive data stored in the public cloud by privileged users,such as corporate companies and government agencies are highly vulnerable in the hands of cloud providers and hackers.The proposed Virtual Cloud Storage Archi-tecture is primarily concerned with data integrity and confidentiality,as well as availability.To provide confidentiality and availability,thefile to be stored in cloud storage should be encrypted using an auto-generated key and then encoded into distinct chunks.Hashing the encoded chunks ensured thefile integrity,and a newly proposed Circular Shift Chunk Allocation technique was used to determine the order of chunk storage.Thefile could be retrieved by performing the opera-tions in reverse.Using the regenerating code,the model could regenerate the missing and corrupted chunks from the cloud.The proposed architecture adds an extra layer of security while maintaining a reasonable response time and sto-rage capacity.Experimental results analysis show that the proposed model has been tested with storage space and response time for storage and retrieval.The VCSA model consumes 1.5x(150%)storage space.It was found that total storage required for the VCSA model is very low when compared with 2x Replication and completely satisfies the CIA model.The response time VCSA model was tested with different sizedfiles starting from 2 to 16 MB.The response time for storing and retrieving a 2 MBfile is 4.96 and 3.77 s respectively,and for a 16 MBfile,the response times are 11.06 s for storage and 5.6 s for retrieval.

NDMP-Plus： An Improved Protocol for Network Based Data Management

Network based data management is the backup/restore mechanism used in a data storage center. This paper presents a new network based data management-NDMP-Plus, a revision of network data management protocol. Components and the working mechanism of the NDMP-Plus architecture are first discussed. Two new techniques in NDMP-Plus-virtual storage layer （VSL） and negotiation mechanism are then studied. VSL is a crucial component to achieve flexibility, and the negotiation mechanism is a key to improve performance. Furthermore, experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of NDMP-Plus. The result suggests that NDMP-Plus has stronger flexibility and better performance than NDMP.

Review of modeling and control strategy of thermostatically controlled loads for virtual energy storage system

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) brings more power generation fluctuations into power systems, which puts forward higher requirement on the regulation capacities for maintaining the power balance between supply and demand. In addition to traditional generators for providing regulation capacities, the progressed information and communication technologies enable an alternative method by controlling flexible loads, especially thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) for regulation services. This paper investigates the modeling and control strategies of aggregated TCLs as the virtual energy storage system (VESS) for demand response. First, TCLs are modeled as VESSs and compared with the traditional energy storage system (ESS) to analyze their characteristic differences. Then, the control strategies of VESS are investigated in microgrid and main grid aspects, respectively. It shows that VESS control strategies can play important roles in frequency regulation and voltage regulation for power systems’ stability. Finally, future research directions of VESS are prospected, including the schedulable potential evaluation, modeling of TCLs, hierarchical control strategies of VESS considering ESSs and RESs and reliability and fast response in frequency control for VESS.

A Virtual Energy Storage System for Voltage Control of Distribution Networks

Increasing amounts of distributed generation(DG)connected to distribution networks may lead to the violation of voltage and thermal limits.This paper proposes a virtual energy storage system(VESS)to provide voltage control in distribution networks in order to accommodate more DG.A VESS control scheme coordinating the demand response and the energy storage system was developed.The demand response control measures the voltage of the connected bus and changes the power consumption of the demand to eliminate voltage violations.The response of energy storage systems was used to compensate for the uncertainty of demand response.The voltage control of the energy storage system is a droop control with droop gain values determined by applying voltage sensitivity factors.The control strategy of the VESS was applied to a medium-voltage network and the results show that the control of the VESS not only facilitates the accommodation of higher DG capacity in the distribution network without voltage violations or network reinforcements but also prolongs the lifetime of the transformer’s on-load tap changer.

Applying File Information to Block-Level Content Addressable Storage

Content addressable storage （CAS） is a promising technology for improving storage efficiency as well as access throughput. Currently, many CAS products are implemented on the block level, which results in loss of file information. Thus, some sophisticated optimizations cannot be achieved, such as accurate fileprefetching. This paper presents a file-aware block-level storage system combined with the CAS function. In contrast with some existing file-level CAS, this system is transparent to upper-level applications, including the operating system and the file system. These features are achieved by using smart-disk technologies to help the storage system to learn the file-system layout. A prototype was implemented on an open-source virtual machine （VM） with the guest operating system being Windows XP. Tests show that this combination significantly reduces the size of the VM image file and improves the storage performance by discarding unused blocks and using a simple file-level prefetching strategy.

Optimal Coordination Control Strategy of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems for Tie-line Smoothing Services in Integrated Community Energy Systems

Increasing renewable energy penetration into integrated community energy systems(ICESs)requires more efficient methods to prevent power fluctuations of the tie–line(connection of the ICESs to the main grid).In this paper,centrally-controlled air conditioners are considered as a virtual energy storage system(VESS).The optimal thermostat regulation is used to manage the charging/discharging power of the VESS within the customer comfort level range and the virtual state of charge(VSOC)is used to describe the charging/discharging power of the VESS.On this basis,the model of the hybrid energy storage system is built with a VESS and a battery storage system(BSS).Then,an optimal coordination control strategy(OCCS)for a hybrid energy storage system is developed considering the state-space equation to describe the OCCS,the constraints of the OCCS,and the objective function to express the optimal coordination control performance.Finally,the influence of the outdoor temperature and the deadband of air conditioners on the results of the OCCS is analyzed.Results show that the OCCS can realize optimal allocation of the storage response amount to trace the reference target accurately and guarantee both the state of charge(SOC)of the batteries in a reasonable range to prolong the battery life and ensure the level of comfort experienced by users.

Massive Storage Systems

To accommodate the explosively increasing amount of data in many areas such as scientific computing and e-Business, physical storage devices and control components have been separated from traditional computing systems to become a; scalable, intelligent storage subsystem that, when appropriately designed, should provide transparent storage interface, effective data allocation, flexible and efficient storage management, and other impressive features. The design goals and desirable features of such a storage subsystem include high performance, high scalability, high availability, high reliability and high security. Extensive research has been conducted in this field by researchers all over the world, yet many issues still remain open and challenging. This paper studies five different online massive storage systems and one offiine storage system that we have developed with the research grant support from China. The storage pool with multiple network-attached RAIDs avoids expensive store-and-forward data copying between the server and storage system, improving data transfer rate by a factor of 2 3 over a traditional disk array. Two types of high performance distributed storage systems for local-area network storage are introduced in the paper. One of them is the Virtual Interface Storage Architecture （VISA） where VI as a communication protocol replaces the TCP/IP protocol in the system. VISA＇s performance is shown to achieve better than that of IP SAN by designing and implementing the vSCSI （VI-attached SCSI） protocol to support SCSI commands in the VI network. The other is a fault-tolerant parallel virtual file system that is designed and implemented to provide high I/O performance and high reliability. A global distributed storage system for wide-area network storage is discussed in detail in the paper, where a Storage Service Provider is added to provide storage service and plays the role of user agent for the storage system. Object based Storage Systems not only store data but also adopt the attributes and methods of objects that encapsulate the data. The adaptive policy triggering mechanism （APTM）, which borrows proven machine learning techniques to improve the scalability of object storage systems, is the embodiment of the idea about smart storage device and facilitates the self-management of massive storage systems. A typical offiine massive storage system is used to backup data or store documents, for which the tape virtualization technology is discussed. Finally, a domain-based storage management framework for different types of storage systems is presented in the paper.