What is it about?

Renewable energy sources have become one of the popular topics in this field. Although these sources are renewable by nature, several difficulties are faced when countries attempt to implement these systems. One of these problems is the changing efficiency of renewable energy sources due to availability and quality of the sources such as sunlight intensity, wind speed, and so on. This study considers various renewable energy sources and different needs in a country. Next, a linear programming model is used to optimize the problem in deterministic form.

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Why is it important?

Renewable energy sources have become one of the popular topics in this field. Although these sources are renewable by nature, several difficulties are faced when countries attempt to implement these systems. One of these problems is the changing efficiency of renewable energy sources due to availability and quality of the sources such as sunlight intensity, wind speed, and so on. This study considers various renewable energy sources and different needs in a country. Next, a linear programming model is used to optimize the problem in deterministic form.

Perspectives

In this article, we presented a new model to optimize use of renewable energy in countries and then transformed our model to FLP to tackle problems related to uncertainty in this field. In the end, we had done a case study in Iran and the results showed that Iran can meet 40% of its electricity need without any problem even without using urban wastes as an energy source, but using urban wastes can raise objective function value by 23%. So we suggest using the urban wastes as an energy source in both sections. Our method can lead to a greener and more economic energy production systems without relying on just one or two energy source while considers attitude of the decision maker toward risk. Whether they are risk-averse or risk-seeker, our model has the needed answer for them. Another point is that using different values for g makes sure that risk is minimized. The results show that renewable energy recourses can meet the demand for electricity regardless of the complications in this field. So it is highly recommended by this study to use RES for generating electricity as soon as possible. Using the method given in this article, every country can gather some data and use the model of this article to not only meet electricity needs but also realize that what sources should be used to satisfy what needs. Future studies may extend the single objective of this article to multi-objective ones that are getting more attentions these days. In addition, we assumed that cost of production is deterministic but this assumption can be questionable in some countries. Besides, there is other RES around the world. For example, countries that have considerable water resources as seas or oceans can produce electricity using the energy of waves. Due to the fact that Iran has a lot of vacant spaces for various uses, currently there are no constraints on the amount of land to be used for biomass or other uses but in the next study which will cover year 2025, we will consider this limitation as well. Another point that should be noted is that bio fuels are not currently useable in Iran because either there are no machines to use this fuel or if there are some machines, they are too expensive to be considered now. But it may be considered in the future. The last important aspect of RES is that some of them do emit greenhouse gases. Currently Iran does not have strict regulations about this problem but in the future, it would be helpful to consider CO2 emission as well.

Dr. javad nematian
University of Tabriz

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This page is a summary of: Future energy and environment management using fuzzy linear programming including energy recovered from urban solid wastes (Case study: Iran country), Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy, January 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/ep.12535.
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