The modern electric power sector has long been defined by its vast grid connections and highly centralized systems of control. After more than a century, this model may at last be changing. New forms of small-scale and distributed generators have become increasingly competitive and are now being deployed extensively. This chapter will focus specifically on the electric power sector and will build on ideas from the fields of energy policy, social science, and philosophy to discuss how the transition to small-scale distributed energy systems may serve to foster new forms of governance characterized by greater community engagement and democratic decision-making.

Charging large fleets of electric ride-hailing vehicles (ERVs) is a complex matter that could serve different objectives: lower carbon dioxide emissions, lower monetary expenditures, or maximize solar photovoltaics (PV) energy consumption. Currently, it is unclear how each of those objectives could impact the business and performance of a ride-hailing fleet. In order to fill this gap, this article employs a dynamic transportation model: a smart charging simulation that combines agent-based, discrete-event, and system dynamic modelling by comparing the above-mentioned objectives in separate scenarios. The results show that each scenario successfully manages to shift between 34% and 87% of all load to hours of the day when the objectives of those scenarios are met. Therefore, in comparison to the baseline, smart charging can save between 5% and 26% of monthly emissions and between 4% and 57% of monthly expenditures. The solar PV scenario, however, results in the highest savings, while ensuring profitable economics via net metering in the short- as well as long term. Finally, the sensitivity analysis points to important trade-offs between several fleet performance metrics. The article concludes by giving business and policy recommendations for maximising the economic, energy and environmental efficiency of large ERV fleets.

While electric vehicle (EV) and residential solar photovoltaic (PV) panel capacities and adoption increase, US Federal states are rolling back their policy and technical support for net metering. This unfavourable situation is studied with a system dynamics model that simulates: 1) The impact of 5%–15% EV/PV capacity growth on net-metered electricity and economic, emission, and energy benefits; 2) The impact of 5%–15% Value of Solar (VoS) tariff decline on household economics; 3) The impact of introducing Time-Of-Use (ToU) rates on expenditures. The results show that net-metered electricity increases by up to 25% in the scenario where PV capacity grows by 15% and EV capacity – by 25%; emissions do not decline by more than 2–3% either. ToU, however, can mitigate revenue loss from declining VoS tariffs and reduce bills by 30% to 362%. The article recommends ToU rates and policies for energy storage and smart charging in the U.S.

Smart charging and battery storage can improve the integration of electric vehicles (EV's) and photovoltaic solar panels (PV's) into the residential buildings of a smart city. The impact of those two solutions can vary across households with an EV, PV, both, or no technologies. Therefore, it is unclear how smart charging and storage impact the energy, economic, and environmental benefits of each technology adoption group. To address this problem, an urban energy system dynamics model compares two smart charging scenarios that optimize PV energy consumption and carbon emissions as well as one scenario that optimizes storage. The results show that in general storage reduces carbon emissions and increases solar energy use more effectively than smart charging. Specifically, it reduces emissions at a rate of 17% and smart charging at 7%; it also increases PV self-consumption at a rate of 45% and smart charging at 28%. The main reason for this difference is that storage is able to shift a larger electricity load than smart charging without compromising user convenience. However, expenditures decline at a faster rate in the smart charging scenario (–91%) than the storage scenario (–52%), due to the ratio of Value of Solar to residential tariffs. Therefore, this article recommends storage as a solution to all technology adoption groups; furthermore, cities are encouraged to invest in energy storage solutions in the short term as well as smart devices in the long term, so that eventually smart charging could shift a larger share of the loads as well. The contribution of this study is that it compares several experimental groups across the energy, emission, and economic benefits derived from their respective clean energy technologies; it also provides specific guidelines for parties interested in optimizing the benefits of their technologies.

New renewable energy generators such as solar photovoltaics and wind turbines have the ability to be sited in a more decentralized manner than conventional generators such as coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, or natural gas plants. However, at the commercial scale, these new renewable generators are often built in existing generation corridors and are not necessarily more decentralized. This paper analyzes the degree of centralization of generators in the contiguous U.S. between 2001 and 2018 and identifies the state level policies that may be driving differences in the degree of centralization between states and regions. The results show that community solar programs such as those in North Carolina and Minnesota have driven greater decentralization of generation while community choice aggregation programs such as those in California have not led to greater decentralization of generation. The degree of centralization of generation assets has implications for sociotechnical systems, communities, energy security, and resiliency against manmade and natural disasters.

Renewable energy technology is often seen as a positive expression of technology, meeting energy needs with minimal environmental impact. But, by integrating nature (e.g., wind and sunlight) with the ordering of the electric grid, renewables silently convert that nature into what Martin Heidegger referred to as standing reserve—resources of the technological commodity chain to be ordered, controlled, converted, and consumed on demand. However, it may be possible to mitigate the downsides of this process through a transition to more decentralized, local sources of renewable energy operations and management that maintain awareness of the ways in which energy is generated and distributed.

Taken as a whole, the electric power sector is one of the largest machines ever built, and as such, running it efficiently requires a specific operational approach: a commitment to highly ordered, interlocking, authoritarian systems. In this sense, it embodies a distinct sociotechnical structure that may be expected to select for, reward, and perpetuate energy professionals whose personalities compliment and further these underlying structures. Given that the sector has an over-representation of men, this perspective proposes that the differences in labor force participation between men and women might be at least partly a function of personality differences between men and women and that the personality diversity in the electric power sector may be worse than the current sex imbalance indicates. Furthermore, the field of personality psychology has shown that sex differences in personality are expected to widen as societies become more egalitarian, a shift that could potentially exacerbate the sex imbalance in the electric power sector. By redesigning the technical aspects of the sector so that it elicits a more balanced sociotechnical expression, it may be possible to simultaneously create a more balanced workforce and an industry more capable of achieving a sustainable future.

Threatened by a changing climate and the increased frequency of droughts and heat waves, more attention is being given to the sourcing of water resources. Especially in the American southwest, the frequency and severity of water shortages as well as elevated surface water temperatures has resulted in a series of threatened or imposed curtailments of thermoelectric power, the largest withdrawer of water in the United States. These cuts in generation can have important implications for the reliability and dispatchability of electric power, especially in summer months when electricity is needed most. This paper examines the potential for using brackish groundwater as a supplemental water source for thermoelectric power generation in seventeen western states and finds that the conversion of drought prone facilities to brackish backup systems would cost on the order of 60–70 thousand dollars per installed megawatt. Action from the federal government to foster basic research and technology readiness combined with state level action to require water resource contingency planning would encourage deployment of brackish water backup systems that would subsequently ensure resiliency and reliability of thermal generation during heat waves and in times of drought.

Thiolate self-assembled monolayers have recently been demonstrated to be effective catalyst modifiers for selectivity control, but these studies have not extensively explored the long term stability of these modifiers or the effects of specific reaction conditions. Here we investigate how the performance of thiolate-modified Pt/Al2O3 catalysts is affected by recycling and regeneration, using the selective hydrogenation of cinnamaldehyde to cinnamyl alcohol as a probe reaction. Although modification of Pt catalysts with 3-phenyl-1-propanethiol results in high selectivity due to a ligand-specific interaction between modifier and reactant during the first use of a given catalyst, repeated recycling was shown to decrease the efficacy of this mechanism due to increasing disorder in the monolayer. However, selectivity and order could be stabilized using a thiol regeneration step or by feeding dilute concentrations of thiols in the reaction mixture. Similarly, aging in air was shown to decrease the order of the thiol and reduced the selectivity improvement of both a 3-phenyl-1-propanethiol and an octadecanethiol (C18) modified Pt/Al2O3 catalyst. These studies show that the ligand-specific interactions between the SAM and the reactant are particularly sensitive to conditions that can degrade the monolayer. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The specificity of chemical reactions conducted over solid catalysts can potentially be improved by utilizing noncovalent interactions to direct reactant binding geometry. Here we apply thiolate self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) with an appropriate structure to Pt/Al2O3 catalysts to selectively orient the reactant molecule cinnamaldehyde in a configuration associated with hydrogenation to the desired product cinnamyl alcohol. While nonspecific effects on the surface active site were shown to generally enhance selectivity, specific aromatic stacking interactions between the phenyl ring of cinnamaldehyde and phenylated SAMs allowed tuning of reaction selectivity without compromising the rate of desired product formation. Infrared spectroscopy showed that increased selectivity was a result of favorable orientation of the reactant on the catalyst surface. In contrast, hydrogenation of an unsaturated aldehyde without a phenyl ring showed a nontunable improvement in selectivity, indicating that thiol SAMs can improve reaction selectivity through a combination of nonspecific surface effects and ligand-specific near-surface effects.

Modification of supported Pt catalysts with thiols has recently been shown to improve the hydrogenation selectivity of α,β-unsaturated aldehydes to unsaturated alcohols. Here, we apply a variety of organic thiol coatings to Pd/Al 2 O 3 catalysts that typically have a much lower intrinsic selectivity for desired product formation. Thiol monolayers were found to increase hydrogenation selectivity to cinnamyl alcohol; however, unlike with Pt catalysts, the increase was independent of the identity of the organic tail.

Pd/Al2O3 catalysts coated with various thiolate self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) were used to direct the partial hydrogenation of 18-carbon polyunsaturated fatty acids, yielding a product stream enriched in monounsaturated fatty acids (with low saturated fatty acid content), a favorable result for increasing the oxidative stability of biodiesel. The uncoated Pd/Al2O3 catalyst quickly saturated all fatty acid reactants under hydrogenation conditions, but the addition of alkanethiol SAMs markedly increased the reaction selectivity to the monounsaturated product oleic acid to a level of 80-90%, even at conversions >70%. This effect, which is attributed to steric effects between the SAMs and reactants, was consistent with the relative consumption rates of linoleic and oleic acid using alkanethiol-coated and uncoated Pd/Al2O3 catalysts. With an uncoated Pd/Al2O3 catalyst, each fatty acid, regardless of its degree of saturation had a reaction rate of similar to 0.2 mol reactant consumed per mole of surface palladium per second. Using alkanethiol-coated Pd/Al2O3 catalysts, the activity was reduced by a factor of 4 for polyunsaturated reactants and by a factor of 100 for the monounsaturated reactants. In contrast to the hydrophobic alkanethiol modifiers, hydrophilic were found to strongly inhibit reaction kinetics.

Alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) have recently been shown to be effective catalyst modifiers for increasing the selectivity of the hydrogenation of 1-epoxy-3-butene (EpB) to 1-epoxybutane in the gas phase. In the results reported here, we demonstrate that SAM coatings can similarly be applied to other supported metals (Pt) and in liquid-phase reaction environments. Coating a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst with n-octadecanethiol resulted in a large improvement in selectivity during vapor-phase EpB hydrogenation, similar to that observed for supported Pd. The liquid phase hydrogenation of EpB using SAM-coated catalysts showed similar selectivity trends in some cases, but interactions of the solvent with the SAM were also important in controlling selectivity. In particular, using a heptane solvent, epoxybutane selectivity increased from 36% with an uncoated Pd/Al2O3 catalyst to 74% with a thioglycerol SAM-coated catalyst. SAM quality was shown to have a strong impact on the rate of reaction but little effect on selectivity. The results generally indicated that selectivity modification with thiol SAMs is extendable to other supported metals and a variety of reaction environments.