HR4RS stamp
Alberto Sanchez Lozano
The Prize of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba is the most prestigious award given in the country in the scientific field. Since 1990, this award recognizes the results of the main research carried out in the country to stimulate scientific creation and the visibility of Cuban science as a fundamental part of its heritage and socioeconomic development.
In the 2019 edition, the PEMAR Project has been the winner of this recognition from the Cuban Academy of Sciences. Within this project, the development of the 'SURE Project' ('Sustainable Rural Energy') is framed, in which the URJC professor Lucía Serrano has participated. The professor of the Higher School of Computer Engineering in the area of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence has collaborated with other Spanish, Colombian and Cuban researchers.
The 'SURE Project' consists of a multi-criteria decision software, to which researchers introduce a series of conditions and factors on a specific area or population so that the program analyzes the information and offers the best renewable energy solution. "Once the software proposes a photovoltaic technology as a solution, the researchers calculate the carbon dioxide avoided thanks to its use (also taking into account the places of manufacture and installation). We also show the results for several technologies, in order to select the one of less environmental impact", indicated Lucía Serrano.
The initiative began to be developed at Imperial College London in 2010. During the time that the research work has lasted, Raúl Olalde, Taymi González and Raúl Sánchez Machado, from the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Center for Agricultural Research, have participated. from the Central University of Santa Marta Abreu de Las Villas de Cuba; Judith A. Cherni, Research Fellow at Imperial College London; Antonio Urbina, from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena; and Juan Felipe Henao Piza, from the ICESI University of Colombia. Together with them, Lucía Serrano, a teacher at the URJC.
"I joined the development of this software in 2011, when I was studying for a doctorate with Antonio Urbina. The objective, in addition to adding the global impacts related to the installation of technologies, was to help developing countries do so in a sustainable and respectful way with the environment, choosing the most suitable renewable energies for each of them", said the URJC teacher.
Project Phases
In Cuba, access to electricity is one of the greatest aspirations of the rural population living in isolated areas, due to its positive influence on living conditions. However, the demographic characteristics of these spaces prevent them from interconnecting with the National Electroenergetic System (SEN), so bringing conventional energy there involves high costs that cannot be subsidized by the government, taking into account that around 5 % of the population does not receive electricity from the SEN.
This situation has led the country to identify as fundamental problems in its energy security, the high dependence on imported fuels, the high average cost of the energy delivered, the heavy environmental pollution and the low use of renewable energy sources.
The procedures implemented in SURE are divided into two phases. The first allows identifying the current state of the resources or capitals of the community with the help of a series of logical rules that relate information from a participatory questionnaire. What is intended is to turn the particular potentialities and needs of the population into the basis or the starting point for decision-making. As a result, decision-makers are presented with the most relevant characteristics that the set of energy alternatives must have, a series of generic energy alternatives to be evaluated, and the baseline.
In the second phase, SURE has, as one of its outputs, the technological matrix, from which it will be possible to define which of the technological options proposed by the latter or by the user of the model will be the most appropriate to implement. The goal is always to get as close as possible to the ideal pentagon and, additionally, the global climate impact is displayed. A procedure is introduced in the model in which a separate set of factors is represented for each function of the resource.
Each factor has a range of values between 0 and 1, where 0 reflects no positive effect or result of the energy alternative on a given capital and 1 expresses its highest effect. In other words, the ideal and maximum measure of positive impact that a community can achieve is 1, which is represented by a structured function for the five types of capitals of the community with respect to energy technology options.
One of the main contributions of the system is that it evaluates, through a quantitative index of the spaces between the theoretical and ideal support, the possible effects of the technologies on the different resources, the existing condition of the resources, their possible improvement with the application of energy, the ordering of technological options, and determines the global impact of avoided carbon dioxide emissions of the technology selected as the most appropriate to implement in an area or zone.