Control of solar thermal plants
Prof. Eduardo F. Camacho,
Dpto. Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática. Escuela Superior de Ingenieros. Sevilla, Spain. –
Abstract:
The use of renewable energy, such as solar energy, experienced a great impulse during the second half of the seventies just after the first big oil crisis. At that time economic issues were the most important factors and the interest in these types of processes decreased when the oil prices fell. There is a renewed interest in the use of renewable energies nowadays driven by the need of reducing the high environmental impact produced by the use of fossil energy systems. There are two main drawbacks of energy systems: a) the resulting energy costs are not yet competitive and b) solar energy is not always available when needed. Considerable research efforts are being devoted to techniques which may help to overcome these drawbacks, control is one of those techniques. A thermal solar power plant basically consists of a system where the solar energy is collected, then concentrated and finally transferred to a fluid. The thermal energy of the hot fluid is then used for different purposes such as generating electricity, the desalination of sea water etc. While in other power generating processes, the main source of energy (the fuel) can be manipulated as it is used as the main control variable, in solar energy systems, the main source of power which is solar radiation cannot be manipulated and furthermore it changes in a seasonal and on a daily base acting as a disturbance when considering it from a control point of view. Solar plants have all the characteristics needed for using advanced control strategies able to cope with changing dynamics, (nonlinearities and uncertainties). As fixed PID controllers cannot cope with some of the mentioned problems, they have to be detuned with low gain, producing sluggish responses or if they are tightly tuned they may produce high oscillations when the dynamics of the process vary, due to environmental and/or operating conditions changes. The use of more efficient control strategies resulting in better responses would increase the number of operational hours of the plants. The talk describes the main solar thermal plants, the control problems involved and how control systems can help in increasing their efficiency. Some illustrative examples are given.
Bio
Eduardo F. Camacho received his doctorate in Electrical engineering from the University of Seville where he is now a full professor of the Department of System Engineering and Automatic Control. He has written the books: Model Predictive Control in the Process industry (1995), Advanced Control of Solar Plants (1997) and Model Predictive Control (1999), (2004 second edition) published by Springer-Verlag, Control e Instrumentación de Procesos Quimicos published by Ed. Sintesis and Control of Dead-time Processes published by Springer-Verlag (2007) and Control of Solar Systems published by Springer Verlag (2011). He has served on various IFAC technical committees and chaired the IFAC publication Committee from 2002-2005. He was the president of the European Control Association (2005-2007) and chaired the IEEE/CSS International Affairs Committee (2003-2006), Chair of the IFAC Policy Committee and a member of the IEEE/CSS Board of Governors. He has acted as evaluator of projects at national and European level and was appointed Manager of the Advanced Production Technology Program of the Spanish National R&D Program (1996-2000). He was one of the Spanish representatives on the Program Committee of the Growth Research program and expert for the Program Committee of the NMP research priority of the European Union. He has carried out review and editorial work for various technical journals and many conferences. At present he is one of the editors of the IFAC journal, Control Engineering Practice, editor at large of the European Journal of Control and subject editor of the journal Optimal Control: Methods and Applications. He was Publication Chair for the IFAC World Congress b.02 and General Chair of the joint IEEE CDC and ECC 2005, and co-general chair of the joint 50th IEEE CDC-ECC 2011.
Host
João Manuel Lage de Miranda Lemos
Venue:
IST Alameda, Room EA5
Upcoming Events
Research data repositories and tools for human genomics data sharing

Inform the human research community of the status and availability of BioData.pt Local EGA and discuss its need and usability challenges.
The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) is a repository for all sequence and genotype experiment types, including case-control, population, and family studies. The EGA will serve as a permanent archive that will archive several levels of data, including the raw data (which could, for example, be re-analysed in the future by other algorithms) as well as the genotype calls provided by the submitters.
Responding to national regulations over human data sharing and other constraints, BioData.pt deploys and operates a Local EGA instance and tools that allow data discovery of genomic and phenoclinic data, following the GA4GH standard and international best practices.
This workshop aims at informing the human research community of the status and availability of BioData.pt Local EGA and discuss from several perspectives its need and usability challenges.
Further details and registration are available here.
OLISSIPO Summer School in Lisbon | Computational phylogenetics to analyse the evolution of cells and communities

We are happy to announce the OLISSIPO Summer School on Computational phylogenetics to analyse the evolution of cells and communities, which will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, at INESC-ID, between July 2-7, 2023.
Keynote speakers:
David Posada, University of Vigo (class)
João Alves, University of Vigo (hands-on)
Nadia El-Mabrouk, Université de Montréal (class)
Mattéo Delabre, Université de Montréal (hands-on)
Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Claremont McKenna College (class and hands-on)
Russell Schwartz, Carnegie Mellon University (class and hands-on)
See the preliminary agenda at: https://olissipo.inesc-id.pt/tree-tango-school
Registration is mandatory. You can register at: https://forms.gle/VsASFHW5E7MJvaCc9
The registration fee is 250€ for students and OLISSIPO members and 350€ for postdocs or other researchers (meals indicated at the schedule of the school are included, accommodation and flights are not). All details will be made available upon registration.
We will have slots for flash talks (3-10 min depending on the number of submissions) to present yourself and the work you have been developing in your research.
The 13th Lisbon Machine Learning School | LxMLS 2023

The Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS) takes place yearly at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). LxMLS 2023 will be a 6-day event (14-20 July, 2023), scheduled to take place as an in-person event.
The school covers a range of machine learning topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving natural language processing problems arising in different application areas. It is organized jointly by Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), a leading Engineering and Science school in Portugal, the Instituto de Telecomunicações, the Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID), the Lisbon ELLIS Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems (LUMLIS), Unbabel, Zendesk, and IBM Research.
Check online for information about past editions: LxMLS 2011, LxMLS 2012, LxMLS 2013, LxMLS 2014, LxMLS 2015, LxMLS 2016, LxMLS 2017, LxMLS 2018, LxMLS 2019, LxMLS 2020, LxMLS 2021, LxMLS 2022 (you can also watch the videos of the lectures for 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020).
31st International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD 2023)

The 31st International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD 2023) conference provides a forum for research and developments in the field of information systems. The theme of ISD 2023 is “Information systems development, organizational aspects and societal trends”. New trends in developing information systems emphasize the continuous collaboration between developers and operators in order to optimize the software delivery time. The conference promotes research on methodological and technological issues and how IS developers and operators are transforming organizations and society through information systems.
The ISD 2023 conference held this year also provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to promote their research, practical experience, and to discuss issues related to Information Systems through papers, posters, and journal-first paper presentations.
ISD 2023 will be hosted by Instituto Superior Técnico, in Lisbon, Portugal, on August 30–September 1, 2023.