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One method to enhance the electrochemical performance of carbon-coated Li2FeSiO4 cathode material in lithium-ion batteries is to produce an ideal Li2FeSiO4 precursor with minimal impurities. A novel precursor for Li2FeSiO4 (Li2O·FeCO3·CH3OSiO2H) was synthesized through a methanol solvothermal reaction under stringent conditions (180 °C and 2.7 MPa), achieving a purity level of 93.2%. During synthesis, the new Li2FeSiO4 precursor exhibits unique self-purification properties and maintains a fine morphology after annealing. The resulting carbon-coated Li2FeSiO4 composites demonstrate a Brunauer–Emmett–Teller specific surface area of 102.4 m2/g and approximately 81% mesoporous volume, with 90% of the pore sizes measuring less than 39 nm. As a cathode material for lithium-ion batteries, this carbon-coated Li2FeSiO4 exhibits initial specific capacities of 172.3 mAh/g (charge) and 159.3 mAh/g (discharge). Remarkably, nearly 50% of the theoretical specific capacity remains after 1300 cycles at a rate of 0.1 C. The excellent electrochemical performance of the carbon-coated Li2FeSiO4 materials is demonstrated by their high lithium-ion diffusivity (DLi+) value of 1.26 × 10−11 cm2/s. Additionally, the enormous capacities-controlled diffusion contribution, which accounts for 70% of the total diffusion at a rate of 1C, is noteworthy. This performance can be attributed to the high purity of the carbon-free Li2FeSiO4 composite, which contains 91% Li2FeSiO4, as well as its favorable morphology.

As phosphorus deficiency limits the productivity of many plantation forests in Asia, there is considerable interest in developing phosphorus-efficient clones for the region through targeted breeding programs. Therefore, we determined growth, nutrient concentrations and nutrient absorption and utility efficiencies of four Betula alnoides clones (C5, C6, 1-202 and BY1) in response to six phosphorus levels of 0, 17, 52, 70, 140 and 209 mg P plant-1 coded as P1 to P6, respectively. Maximum growth occurred in the P4, P5 and P6 plants since they had the largest height, biomass, leaf area and branch number. Phosphorus application increased the phosphorus concentrations of all clones. Nutrient loading was achieved with the P6 treatment because growth and biomass were not significantly higher, but root, stem and leaf phosphorus concentrations were approximately twice those of P4 plants. Clone BY1 had the highest phosphorus-efficiency, and is recommended for field application due to its maximum root collar diameter, biomass, root/shoot ratio, leaf area, nutrient absorption and utility efficiency among the four clones. The findings will help to improve the nutrient efficiency of this species in plantation forestry in Asia.

The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has produced continent-wide analysis of many aspects of Africa's infrastructure challenge. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's Infrastructure: a time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for policy makers, that report necessarily focused on the high-level conclusions. It attracted widespread media coverage feeding directly into discussions at the 2009 African Union Commission Heads of State Summit on Infrastructure. Although the flagship report served a valuable role in highlighting the main findings of the project, it could not do full justice to the richness of the data collected and technical analysis undertaken. There was clearly a need to make this more detailed material available to a wider audience of infrastructure practitioners. Hence the idea of producing four technical monographs, such as this one, to provide detailed results on each of the major infrastructure sectors, information and communication technologies (ICT), power, transport, and water, as companions to the flagship report. These technical volumes are intended as reference books on each of the infrastructure sectors. They cover all aspects of the AICD project relevant to each sector, including sector performance, gaps in financing and efficiency, and estimates of the need for additional spending on investment, operations, and maintenance. Each volume also comes with a detailed data appendix, providing easy access to all the relevant infrastructure indicators at the country level, which is a resource in and of itself.

Cloud Computing is the origin for various distributed computing such as mobile cloud computing, mobile edge computing, fog computing, transparent computing etc. The proposed work focuses mainly on mobile cloud computing and mobile edge computing. It discusses various frameworks to execute these computing and pricing models suitable to be incorporated with mentioned computing environments. One such mobile cloud computing framework is scalable key parameter yield of resources (SKYR) framework, which is a cloudlet-based computing framework. In this computing framework, cloudlet is the main computing component which provides the cloud-based services at the local level in the vicinity of the mobile users. This SKYR framework lacks intrinsic pricing module and utility efficiency module. The proposed work facilitates SKYR framework with mentioned modules and hence improves its performance to great extent as shown in the result section. The paper also discusses pricing model which facilitates profit maximization and auction theory for resource providers and users. Latest theoretical profit maximization incentive mechanism (PMIM) pricing model is improved in this proposed work to scalable profit optimized incentive mechanism for resources pricing model. The proposed pricing model addresses the drawbacks of the PMIM. The utility module discusses about the utility efficiency calculation mechanism which helps to analyse the performance of cloudlets and judges the satisfaction level of cloudlets which act as resource provider and mobile users.

Building energy signature analysis is a well-established tool for understanding the temperature sensitivity of building energy consumption and measuring energy savings. This tool has been used to measure energy savings of residential, commercial, and even industrial buildings. The public availability of electricity loads (i.e., hourly electricity demand (MW)) from entire Balancing Authorities (BAs) provide an interesting opportunity to apply this approach to a large aggregate load. In this paper, we explore that opportunity for BAs and show that the correlations for large geographical areas are surprisingly coherent when the change-point linear regression analysis is used with the daily interval data of electricity demand and outside air temperature. The change-point linear regression models of all the BAs, except WAUW and OVEC, show R2 of 0.70 or more and CV-RMSE of 10.0% or less. We also suggest an analysis method that allows for meaningful comparisons between BAs and to assess changes in time for a given BA which could be used to interpret changes in load patterns year-to-year, accounting for changes in weather. This approach can be used to verify the impact of energy efficiency programs on a building component/system-wide basis. This study shows the annual electricity demand reductions for SCL and IPCO are 136,655 MWh (1.5%) and 182,053 MWh (1.1%), respectively.

Utility financed and/or operated energy efficiency schemes have a long history going back to the first energy crisis in 1973. It is therefore appropriate to ask what is new about the recent raft of white certificate schemes and whether there is anything that makes them more effective than the older approaches. This paper attempts to answer these questions by reviewing the experience with earlier utility schemes and comparing them with the more recent schemes implemented on both sides of the Atlantic as well as Australia. Up-to-date results are reported on utility programme impact in all the regions, including a new indicator analysis of the collective, long-term impact of such schemes in the USA. From this it is clear that both the new and old schemes are highly effective in delivering substantial, sustained and cost effective energy savings and associated reductions in CO 2 emissions. A key component of programme impact, including cost-effectiveness, is the effective alignment of utility commercial incentives with the delivery of energy savings. There are essentially two new elements of the recent utility energy efficiency schemes: i) mandated energy savings obligations and ii) the flexibility to trade the obligations. The mandated savings obligation, when linked to a suitable non-compliance penalty structure, seems to be an especially effective means of ensuring that public policy objectives for energy efficiency are met. The importance of allowing obligations to be traded for programme success is not yet clear and will require more time before proper longitudinal evaluations can be attempted.

Previous energy conservation research highlights the importance of behavior, customer commitments, and energy efficiency programs. Much has been written on the impact of behavior energy efficiency savings documented through home energy report programs. This research expands upon utility efforts to offer behavior utility programs and documents the impact of utility customer commitment research through a formalized utility pilot program. In this pilot program in Utah, the ThermWise ®  (ThermWise is the company related branding for Dominion Energy’s energy efficiency programs in Utah.) Energy Pledge, natural gas utility residential customers agreed to a 2-year customer energy pledge pilot program (2019–2021). By enrolling in the pilot, customers set a goal for energy reduction. Customers received monthly text messages in the program with energy-saving tips, a monthly goal status email, cold winter text alerts, and annual emailed program reports. Initially, in 2019, over 2000 customers enrolled in the pilot program. Following the program, an evaluation revealed significant energy savings. Most compelling in those findings discovered that customers who agreed to allow their name to be published on a corporate website had over double the savings of other program participants. The pledge program confirms the impact of customer commitments on their energy use and offers promise for future utility programs encompassing commitments. Further research is warranted on identifying how further incorporate commitments into utility programs.

Objectives (1) assessing the effectiveness of resource allocation in the public utility sector groups during remote work, (2) examining the efficiency of remote work compared to stationary work from the entire public utility organization point of view.Methodology To operationalize the research aim, ten research questions (RQ1-RQ9) and a research hypothesis (H1) were prepared for the identification of the effectiveness of resource allocation (Table 1).H1. If remote work improves time management effectiveness for daily tasks, employees are willing to invest their resources to work remotely.Research question RQ10 was prepared to achieve this goal, and the second hypothesis (H2) was formulated.H2. Remote working reduces public utility sector institutions’ resource consumption (utility expenses).Findings (1) remote work requirements do not occupy a significant portion of annual budgets for public utility services, (2) remote work allows reducing the fixed costs of maintaining stationary working in the short term, (3) even if remote work is a cost-effective method for public utility services and decreases indirect employee costs, it has yet to be incorporated successfully.Value added: Consequently, remote work saves resources and is cost-effective for employers. It lowers indirect employee costs (real tax deductible costs) in terms of utility expenses because employees work out of their institutions’ premises in civil and administrative services. In addition, the employer does not finance the psychological and physiological needs of employees adapting to remote work in both services.Recommendations Future research will be essential to assess whether remote work applications have improved in the public utility sector in this regard. Additionally, it would be best practice to conduct a study with a similar research concept in the private sector to compare findings and implementation strategies and offer solutions to the challenges caused by remote work.

This paper studies the impact of social comparison and fairness concerns on the efficiency of a two-stage process. The decision maker of each stage cares about not only the absolute score of his efficiency, but also the relative status when comparing with the other. By incorporating the utility theory and the concept of fairness, an efficiency-based Neumann–Morgenstern cardinal utility is defined to compose of basic utility from his self-efficiency and additional utility from the fairness concern of the other’s efficiency. Utility-based two-stage models are proposed to optimize the utilities of the stages rather than only the efficiencies instead. We characterize the concern of fairness as advantageous and disadvantageous inequity based on equitable outcome comparison. By investigating the non-cooperating relationship between two stages, we show that the stage dominating the process has the incentive to optimize his efficiency without ignoring that of the other, which is contrary to the conventional situation. In addition, the coefficients of equitable outcome and inequity significantly affect the efficiencies of both stages. We further investigate the cooperation between two stages and find that the efficiencies of the stages vary with the coefficients of unfairness perceptions. Numerical analysis verifies the validity of the proposed models and identifies the impacts of the coefficients of equitable outcome and inequity on the stages’ and overall efficiencies.