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A Methodology for Optimal Load Management and Aggregation Strategies in Grid-Interactive Building Clusters
Get PDFThe decentralization of energy markets, driven by electrification and renewable energy adoption, necessitates a shift from a “follow-the-supply” to a “follow-the-demand” model, requiring grid operators to digitalize and modernize infrastructure to better accommodate distributed energy production and balance demand. In this context, energy aggregators play a crucial role by enabling building clusters to function as unified entities, thereby optimizing interactions with day-ahead coordination and intra-day markets.
This thesis investigates two key aspects of demand-side management: the role of energy aggregators in shaping residential load profiles and the development of optimal aggregation strategies. These aspects have been scarcely investigated, especially by exploiting measured data. To achieve these goals, a hierarchical control methodology is proposed for energy aggregators to coordinate individual homes within clusters. Leveraging data from smart thermostats and power meters, the methodology integrates predictive modelling and control strategies at a building cluster scale. To this aim, buildings are modelled as reduced-order grey-box networks, capturing thermal dynamics in a simplified yet accurate manner. Machine learning techniques are employed to support the creation of these data-driven models, ensuring robustness and adaptability. Advanced control techniques, such as the economic Model Predictive Control, evaluate energy flexibility by comparing performance to reference demand profiles, ensuring adherence to technical constraints while minimizing the economic expense. A Monte Carlo estimation technique is used to account for variability and heterogeneity within portfolios, facilitating probabilistic decision-making to address uncertainties and diverse operational conditions. Clustering techniques are then used to propose a flexibility-informed benchmarking procedure, supporting the creation of control archetypes and diverse strategies.
The proposed methodology is validated through three case studies and measured dataset of varying populations and resolution: (1) the Experimental House for Building Energetics in Shawinigan, Quebec, a fully instrumented, unoccupied research house to test real implementation of demand-side management; (2) a virtual community of 30 houses in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, equipped with smart thermostats and sensors; and (3) a dataset of approximately 100,000 monitored homes provided by a North American thermostat company enables the creation of energy aggregation strategies and prediction of their aggregated impact on the grid. These case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of energy aggregators in optimizing household costs and support transactive power grid management.
By addressing the dual objectives of cost minimization for customers and operational efficiency for grid operators, this research contributes to the design and implementation of energy aggregators as key enablers of the “follow-the-demand” energy paradigm. This thesis provides actionable insights into energy flexibility and portfolio management, paving the way for the scalable deployment of sustainable and efficient energy systems
madaraka express and other stories
No full textThis collection of short stories is a train that promises a journey of sorts and gives snapshots of characters’ diverse worlds and motivations. A mother loses her voice after losing everything to the modern developments; a strange friendship develops between a coffin-maker and a little boy that stutters. The coffin shop becomes a haven for them as they negotiate with their own tragedies. Sugartown announces a strange woman, Grace, who works as a barmaid amidst a militia group’s insurgence. The Heart is a Bastard unpacks unrequited love that features a femme fatale and her houseboy who waits to be let in as a man and a father. Mareba’s Tavern personifies a woman who cherishes sexual autonomy. Marisela’s Underwear unearths the AIDs scourge. The narrator grapples with the eerie incident of the disappearance of the woman’s underwear that invokes a curse on every witness.
Yet in Little Paradise the daring Cheche finds her freedom when her husband-to-be is said to be arriving soon. Another daring boy in Gathering Darkness in a Bucket trails his brother who disappeared. Later found in a brothel, the narrator rejoices at the realization the bullies were wrong. In Fangs we witness how telenovelas unite and disunite this family. The narrator watches as the venom sips into her mother’s heart following her father’s disappearance. Some Sunshine is a coming of age story that balances between urbanism and traditional model as we know love to be
An Artistic and Performative Decoding and Encoding of International Law for the Posthuman Cyborg Anthropocene
Get PDFThis dissertation describes the development of my transdisciplinary international law-arts research-creation (TILARC) practice for decoding and encoding international law through art and performance. This practice is based on a critique of the body of international law that developed from the 1945 Charter of the United Nations. It uses art and performance to imagine renewing this planetary charter to address the environmental, technological, humanitarian and human rights challenges of our times. This is not a law reform project, but an imaginative and creative project aimed at engaging a broader audience in thinking and making art and performance about international law relevant to contemporary crises.
TILARC was developed from my desire to make art and performance while contemplating international law unbounded by the confines of legal practice. It is a reflective practice of decoding international law and a creative practice of encoding values more suited to addressing contemporary challenges. The dissertation provides an overview of the international law system and identifies its defects and potential for addressing contemporary issues. Through diffractive reading of critical literature about the language of law and international law’s foundations, and cultural and philosophical critiques, the dissertation explores how law interacts with the crises of the posthuman cyborg anthropocene.
Fuelled by these insights, research-creation provides a thoughtful, embodied means to explore and deepen transdisciplinary practice, by mingling artmaking, performance and law in a continuous productive flow. Autoethnography, grounded theory, practice-led research, critical studies and relativism provide ethical guidance for developing experiential, data-driven, performative, embodied knowledge combining the arts and international law.
The dissertation documents TILARC projects of reimagining through art and performance values that are more suited for our times. These include exploring identity through painting masks; using sketching to reflect on war and peace; artivism, artmaking and lawmaking to envision a future without plastic pollution; and political, academic and artistic projects seeking to uncover and encode shared values to support collaborative co-creation. TILARC produces practical and scholarly contributions to knowledge about how the arts can be used to gain deeper understanding of international law problems and strengthen individual agency in seeking to contribute creatively to possible solutions
"Our Memory Shall be a Blessing": Constructing and Philanthropizing the Legacy of Robert F. Kennedy
Get PDFSince his death in 1968, popular works and recollections about Senator Robert F. Kennedy have all told a similar story: that Kennedy was a singular politician with a special connection to underdogs, and that when he died, the nation collectively mourned, for there was something redeeming about America’s future that died with him. The context and production of this narrative has thus far remained largely unchallenged, which has allowed the proliferation of an incomplete story. I argue here that this popular conception of Kennedy’s legacy was heavily informed and mediated by his friends and family in the public mourning practices they organized following Kennedy’s death. This resulted in the formation of a legacy that was flattering to Kennedy’s memory. This constructed legacy was lucrative: it was used to create the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, which both structured itself around and reinforced Kennedy’s legacy in order to engage in philanthropic endeavours. The RFK Memorial ensured the continuance of its namesake’s legacy – but it also directly contradicted this legacy’s central principles by enacting programs which were funded by architects of the ongoing War on Crime. Studying this process is crucial to understanding how liberalism and liberal institutions also contributed to the War on Crime, and how the memory of liberal figures can be co-opted to enact programs that are directly antithetical to their works in life
Novel Probabilistic Frameworks for Author-Level Topic Modeling
Get PDFThe increasing complexity of textual data in modern applications, such as social media and academic literature analysis, needs improved topic modeling techniques that capture sparsity, variability, and nuanced author-topic relationships. Because of their rigorous assumptions and inadequate adaptability in representing various data, traditional models generally fail to address these shortcomings. We present two novel probabilistic models, Author Dirichlet Multinomial Allocation with Generalized Distribution (ADMAGD) and Author Beta-Liouville Multinomial Allocation (ABLiMA) to overcome these drawbacks while strengthening the state of author-specific topic modeling. To depict complex author-topic relationships, ADMAGD incorporates the Generalized Dirichlet distribution. For datasets with uneven or absent topic representations, ABLiMA uses the Beta-Liouville distribution to adjust for topic distribution variability and sparsity. By comparing these models to common datasets like the NIPS and 20 Newsgroups datasets, the research presented here demonstrates how well these models manage sparsity, capture complex theme preferences, and generate coherent subjects. The results show that the models can be applied to many situations. Coherence measure and author-topic relationship visualizations further validate their interpretability and usefulness
La Mode des Milles Collines: gathering critical perspectives on the globalized fashion industry from Kigali's design scene following the nationwide secondhand clothing ban
Get PDFEach year, ships filled with tons of discarded secondhand clothes from Europe and Americaarrive to the coast of East Africa to be sold, often ending up in colossal landfills due to the poor condition in which they arrive. The government of Rwanda, following its policy guidelines of agaciro, or autonomy, decided to ban the importation of all secondhand clothing in 2018, with the objective of developing the local fashion industry. This considerably transformed the fashion landscape in Rwanda, and although this initial objective of stimulating production for local consumption did not succeed, it did contribute in propelling Kigali-based designers to new heights in the international fashion scene. This thesis analyzes this Kigali fashion scene as a way to garner critical insights from its designers on the way that the industry works, and on ways in which they break free from the power dynamics imposed by colonization and globalization
Imaging a Sense of Place and Community: Curating Socially Engaged Art Interventions through Art-Based Action Research (ABAR)
Get PDFThis dissertation investigates how innovative Socially Engaged Art (SEA) practices can cultivate a sense of community and place within rapidly transforming urban environments, focusing on Griffintown, Montreal—a historically post-industrial neighbourhood undergoing significant redevelopment. Employing Art-Based Action Research (ABAR) as its methodological framework, the study examines how art interventions can inspire social change and fortify community bonds. Three SEA interventions—a photography workshop, a collective mapping exercise, and a virtual open call—engaged diverse participants, fostering reinterpretations of Griffintown's spaces and cultivating connections among its evolving communities. Through iterative refinement and formative evaluations, the research deepened insights into the potential of SEA to foster meaningful community engagement. By fostering creativity, critical thinking, and dialogue, the interventions built a sense of place and community and contributed to the broader discourse on art's role in society. Findings highlight SEA's capacity to nurture a sense of belonging and collective identity, particularly in areas experiencing rapid urban transformation. The study emphasizes the role of socially engaged artists as curators and educators who facilitate dialogue, social integration, and cultural resilience. This dissertation advocates for curatorial practices that prioritize inclusivity, participation, and the empowerment of marginalized communities, proposing a model for curating SEA that bridges artistic, educational, and community-building endeavours. By addressing the intersections of art education, urban pedagogy, community engagement, and cultural policy, this work offers new frameworks for developing SEA interventions that promote cultural democracy and social change. This research's theoretical and practical contributions provide valuable insights for artists, educators, institutions, and policymakers, paving the way for inclusive, sustainable, and participatory pluralism in urban contexts
Burur & Interactive Wearable Sound Art: Feeling the Unspoken Excess of Somali Diasporic Affect
Get PDFThose in the Somali and larger Black Diaspora in Canada have learned to navigate this liminal space where we negotiate our cultural identity and expression to fit into white hegemonic society. This practice is known as code switching. This ability to adapt and fit into various settings and situations while still holding on to your culture is often seen as a superpower in the Black Diaspora, but it is also a heavy burden. Code switching is the need to conform and express oneself in a palatable way in colonialist societies. In my research I explore how concepts like the Technovocalic Body, Black technopoetics, sonic substance, and Toloobid might create an alternative way of self expression that allow for those in the Black Diasporic to speak and literally feel their ineffable thoughts and emotions while reaffirming their cultural identity. This project utilizes research-creation to create a wearable interactive sound art piece, the Burur Device, that allows a person to haptically engage with affectively charged sonic media and respond to it by distorting it and imbuing it with their own feelings. The Burur Device was created by attending Somali cultural events and engaging with the sound recordings of these to recreate a sonic space to inhabit, feel and distort. The immersions and immediacy of interactive haptic sound capabilities of the Burur Device offer a way for those in the Black Diaspora to express, materialize and embody the ineffable pressures of code switching that alludes language (for now)
Chronicles of the Forest: From the Walbran to Fairy Creek, What the Forest Needs, Our Heart Needs
Get PDFThis publication is based on a series of discussions carried out between Elder William (Bill) Jones of the Pacheedaht First Nation, artist and researcher Leila Sujir, and other members of the Elastic Spaces research group that took place online from 2020 to 2021. Organized into five chapters developed by Jones, each one presents a selection of short quotes by Jones, arranged in a poetic and narrative flow to reflect the author’s unique voice. The quotes relate to his lived experiences in and around the Walbran Forest and his reflections on the Fairy Creek old-growth logging protests. The publication includes a map of the Fairy Creek watershed, original artwork and book design by artist Daniela Ortiz, and a portrait of the authors by Yves Mayrand
Futures
No full textFutures is a novel about Calgary in 2011. Set in the midst of the city’s volatile economic boom, the narrative follows Lyle Oglov’s coming-of-age journey as he navigates uncertainty in his own life and in the world. Drawing on traditions of paranoid fiction in the vein of DeLillo and Pynchon, as well as classic Bildungsroman and picaresque novels such as The Catcher in the Rye and A Confederacy of Dunces, the novel inverts these predecessors, and offers a satirical critique of the contradictions inherent in art-making, activism, and daily life within an extractive economy, exploring the futility of dogmatic adherence to both mainstream narratives and their alternatives