Analyzing Energy Sources for Electricity Generation

Use Case Presentation

Han WangOctober 17th, 2011

Semantic eScience F11Semantic eScience F11

Motivation

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Motivation

• Two questions:

– How widely is the renewable energy sources utilized in electricity generation ?

– What are the advantages in terms of the amount of emissions using the renewable energy sources in electricity generation?

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Semantic Components

• Communication between datasets– Ontology

• Reasoning

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Use Case

• Perform an analysis on the energy sources used in electricity generation in terms of the usage percentage of a specific type of energy source and the amount of emission from the electricity generation plants utilizing a specific type of energy source

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Goal

• Electricity is an extremely flexible form of energy, and has been adapted to a huge, and growing, number of uses. There are a variety of energy sources that can be used to generate electricity, including coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, etc. Some concerned individual citizens and organizations have shown their interest in the impact of the electricity generation on the environment. They want to understand things like the percentages of different energy sources used in electricity generation. They also would like to learn about the amount of emissions from the electricity generation plants utilizing different energy sources. The proposed system, an analysis portal, provides an easy to use interface, automates data integration and presentation, and renders the results in a user friendly way.

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Actors

• Primary: Citizen• Primary: Organization• Secondary: EIA statistics and analysis

EIA – U.S. Energy Information Administration

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Preconditions

• Existing statistics of electricity generation by state/type of producer/energy source via EIA

• The data being converted to RDF and then loaded into triple store

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Triggers

• Analysis of the usage of renewable energy sources in electricity generation needs to be performed

• Analysis of emissions from electricity generation plants using different energy sources needs to be performed

• Environmental policies regarding the two analyses above need to be made

• Business decisions of investing in electricity generation plants need to be made

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Basic Flow

1. User accesses the Analysis Portal2. User selects a type of energy source that is

used for electricity generation3. Portal retrieves data from triple store and

renters the results4. User clicks a state5. Portal displays usage details of the selected

energy source in this state

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Alternate Flow

1. User accesses the Analysis Portal2. User selects a type of energy source that is used

for electricity generation3. User selects a type of emission from electricity

generation plants4. Portal retrieves data from triple store and

renters the results 5. User clicks a state6. Portal displays emission details of the selected

energy source in this state11

Activity Diagram

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Preliminary Ontology

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References

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• http://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-Utilities/Electricity-Generation-by-State-by-Type-of-Produce/rhyi-ndfk

• http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.cfm• http://tw.rpi.edu/web/project/

SemantAQUA/UseCases

Thank You!

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• Comments?• Questions?• Suggestions?