Background Maternal and newborn mortality remain a pervasive problem in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia; annually, as many as 300,000 maternal deaths occur worldwide from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. One million newborns do not survive their first day of life. Interven…
"140" Result
Sort By:
At its core, environmental & resource economics seeks to identify and correct market failures, i.e. situations in which markets fail to allocate resources in a way that maximizes society’s economic welfare. Some of the greatest issues of our time such as water and air pollut…
Inspired by Imitation Learning, this dissertation trained a LSTM network by a mock-up operation experience of a solar energy community distribution system. Unlike the conventional method that implements LSTM only to predict features for the control programme to calculate an oper…
In this dissertation, six artificial intelligence (AI) based methods for forecasting solar irradiance are presented. Solar energy is a clean renewable energy source (RES) which is free and abundant in nature. But despite the environmental impacts of fossil energy, global depende…
The addition of a thermal energy storage (TES) into a process allows the operator to store and release thermal energy on demand. This increased process flexibility leads to potential benefits such as shifting energy demand from peak to off-peak hours. In particular, so called ph…
In the 1970s, California Governor Jerry Brown imposed new limits on California, arguing that future losses of revenue and natural resources could alter state government’s capacity to provide services. Embracing conservative ideas like reducing the size of government, limiting so…
This dissertation consists of three essays on public policy related to renewable energy, economic growth and tax policy. Each chapter is implemented with a different econometric method to investigate the policy question of interest. The first chapter studies the effect of renewa…
Royal Dutch Shell, plc (Shell, or RDS) is the largest integrated company in the Oil and Gas sector, in terms of assets. It operates globally, with regard to the geography in which it has interests, and integrates the entire value chain into its business model. With more than a c…
A smart pitch control strategy for a variable speed doubly fed wind generation system is presented in this thesis. A complete dynamic model of DFIG system is developed. The model consists of the generator, wind turbine, aerodynamic and the converter system. The strategy proposed…
Capital investment reduction, exergetic efficiency improvement and material compatibility issues have been identified as the primary techno-economic challenges associated, with the near-term development and deployment of thermal energy storage (TES) in commercial-scale concentra…
Use of solar photovoltaic (PV) and other renewable sources to meet rising electricity demand by a growing world population has gained traction in many countries in recent years. In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, where 86 percent of the populace has no access to electricity, solar ene…
Peer victimization and bullying are a widespread problem among children, which can lead to mental, behavioral and physical adjustment problems. Due to these excessive costs, much attention has been directed at identifying and examining risk factors for engaging in bullying behav…
To increase the deployment of photovoltaic (PV) systems, a higher level of performance for PV modules should be sought. Soiling, or dust accumulation on the PV modules, is one of the conditions that negatively affect the performance of the PV modules by reducing the light incide…
Some of the main energy issues in developing countries are high dependence on non-renewable energy sources, low energy efficiency levels and as a result of this high amount of CO2 emissions. Besides, a common problem of many countries including developing countries is economic i…
Through land use and biomass utilization, humans are dominant forces in the planetary biosphere and carbon and nitrogen cycles. Economic subsidies and policy mandates for producing biomass-sourced fuels and electricity could increase further the human appropriation of planetary …
The direct energy conversion between heat and electricity based on thermoelectric effects is a topic of long-standing interest in condensed matter materials science. Experimental and theoretical investigations in order to understand the mechanisms involved and to improve the mat…
This dissertation studies two important problems in the field of biomass supply chain network. In the first part of the dissertation, we study the impact of different carbon regulatory policies such as carbon cap, carbon tax, carbon cap-and-trade and carbon offsetmechanism on th…
This study examines the impact of the partnership synergy and inter-organizational cooperation between government (federal, state, local), public agencies, private companies and local on successful communities commercialization of renewable energy (RE) technologies. The study pr…
This thesis presents fabrication and characterization of a small scale photo-electro-chemical (PEC) solar cell. The cell consists of a p-type silicon cathode with an etched micro-cavity that houses the zinc chloride electrolyte solution, and the cavity is covered by a sheet of z…