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1.2. General formalities
1.2 General formalities
Decimal separator
The European decimal separator, decimal comma, is used throughout the
report. Dot is used as thousand separator.
Dot notation
In this report the dot notation is applied, i.e. ẋ is the time derivative of
the variable x.
1.3 General introduction
Climate changes, security of energy supply, and high oil prices are all
arguments for finding alternatives to the worlds energy sources which
today primarily are based on fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas. The
increasing demand for energy has a major impact on the environment
especially due to emission of CO 2 which contributes to the green house
effect and thereby increases the average temperature of the Earth 1 . This
is one of the most extensive challenges for mankind in our time and
probably in the future as well. Energy efficiency also play an important
role in reducing the primary energy consumption - in all parts of the
supply chain starting from primary energy to end-use services.
The consumption of primary energy can be split up in sectors
like ”electricity and heat production” (energy conversion), ”industry”,
”business and service”, ”residential” and ”transport”. Some examples of
how energy could be saved within these sectors are briefly described in
the following sections.
1.3.1 Distributed generation
Distributed generation (DG) of electricity and heat is an opportunity
for reducing the energy losses in the ”electricity and heat” sector.
Traditionally most power is produced by large scale power stations and
1 According to IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
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