• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.611-628
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine influence of home energy cost on housing cost burden of Korean and U.S. monthly renter households in urban areas and to explore influences of household and housing characteristics on their home energy cost burden. Microdata for this research was extracted from the 2011 Korean Household Budget Survey and 2009 American Housing Survey. Monthly renter households in urban areas were initially grouped based on household income, followed by a detailed analysis of housing and home energy cost. Findings are as follows: (1) The maximum ratio of home energy cost to household house hold income in Korea was 49% compared to 83% in the US; (2) Energy cost to income ratio were found to have significant influences on housing cost burden and lower income households' housing cost burden was found more vulnerable to their energy cost; (3) In general, the energy cost burden of low-income renter households in Korea tended to be influenced by household size, the number of household members staying at home during daytime hours and housing unit size. The energy cost burden of low-income renter households in the U.S. tended to be influenced by home structure type, size and age, the householder's age, race, educational attainment, the household size, number of wage earners per household, income, and the number of household members between 7 and 17 years of age.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.79-87
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• 2015

This study explored low-income households' experiences and perception of home energy cost burdens and determinants of the perceived home energy cost burdens. Between March and July 2014, a questionnaire survey was administered in Cheongju, South Korea. Among the 434 useable responses collected, responses from 218 households with monthly income less than 2,500,000 Korean Won (KRW) were compared with those of 216 households with higher incomes. The main findings are as follows. In the past three years, more than 10 percent of low-income households had had their electricity cut off; 5.7 percent had had their city gas cut off. To pay for their home energy expenses, nearly 70 percent of the low-income households had had to limit their heating, cooling or spending for other necessities; 38.3 percent had to borrow money. Low-income households reported more problems paying for home energy than higher-income households did. Households with more negative evaluation of rainwater leak, no one staying at home all day, monthly income less than 1,500,000 KRW and householders in their 40s and 50s tended to perceive a heavier home energy cost burden. Finally, the most popular support programs were fuel assistance and discounts on energy bills.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.101-130
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• 2023

The increasing cost, and demand for, household energy has increased attention to the phenomena of energy burdens. Despite this increased attention, a lack of consensus remains in pinpointing the strongest predictors, and geographic differences, that exist within the energy ecosystem. This study addresses this gap by utilizing a series of dummy variable regressions across cities, suburbs, and rural areas within Erie County, New York-a county noted to have particularly high energy burdens. Specifically, three types of predictor sets were incorporated into the methodology: a set of socioeconomic variables, physical variables, and a combination of both variable sets. The results of this study suggest that cities tend to have the highest electricity burdens. Despite the aging infrastructure in Erie County, high energy burdens were driven primarily by socioeconomic factors such as housing cost burden and poverty status. Lastly, this study explores various planning and policy implications Erie County can utilize to reduce energy burdens. In turn, this study highlights the importance of focusing policy efforts on existing social service programs to provide support to the region's neediest households.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.38-44
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• 2020

Various efforts have been initiated to reduce the energy consumption of the compressor as it is one of the approaches to saving a large portion of the fixed cost of the production site. Various results of reducing the energy consumption of the compressor have been reported, but to reduce the energy consumption of the compressors fundamentally, regular management of the compressor should ensure optimum operation. This requires periodic on-site visits by experts, but is often overlooked as a cost issue, resulting in the use of the compressor in low-efficiency conditions. Thus, it is necessary to develop a low-cost evaluation technology for compressor condition monitoring and efficiency analysis to ensure that the compressor is always driven at the optimum efficiency without imposing undue burden on the compressor user. In this study, a sensor was installed at the inlet, outlet, and power supply of the compressor, and a method for evaluating the energy consumption of the compressor using the minimum sensor was derived. The experimental results are presented to show the validity of the proposed method. It was confirmed that the energy consumption of the compressor can be easily as well as efficiently evaluated by using the method developed in this study.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.422-430
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• 2018

Increase in oil prices and building energy consumption has been a great burden for Korea which has significant energy dependence on foreign energy sources. In this context, reduction of building energy consumption, which comprises 40% of total energy consumption, is a very important issue. This research therefore empirically analyzed a hospital "P" that implemented ICT-based energy consumption and cost reduction initiative. The hospital first replaced existing water absorber for heating/cooling air and boiler for heating water with water heat storage heat pump system. This was accompanied by subscribing to different electricity price plans to maximize cost reduction. Secondly, the hospital additionally applied ICT-based optimized control algorithm that considers surrounding factors (external temperature, changes in energy demand). The analysis of these mechanisms indicate that the ICT-based energy consumption and cost reduction initiative for hospitals can reduce energy consumption by 53.6% with replacement of low-efficiency equipment and additionally by 18.2% with optimized control algorithm. The mechanisms will provide energy consumption reduction opportunities for other hospitals and buildings with high energy consumption.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.1163-1170
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• 2014

Due to global environmental regulations and policies with rapid advancement of renewable energy technologies, the development type of renewable energy sources (RES) in power systems is expanding from small-scale distributed generation to large-scale grid-connected systems. In the near future, it is expected that RES achieves grid parity which means the equilibrium point where the power cost of RES is equal to the power costs of conventional generators. However, although RES would achieve the grid parity, the cost related with development of large-scale RES is still a big burden. Furthermore, it is hard to determine a suitable capacity of RES because of their output characteristics affected by locations and weather effects. Therefore, to determine an optimal capacity for RES becomes an important decision-making problem. This study proposes a method for determining an optimal installed capacity of RES from the business viewpoint of an independent power plant (IPP). In order to verify the proposed method, we have performed case studies on real power system in Incheon and Shiheung areas, South Korea.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.79-86
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• 2014

Studies have shown that the thermal performance of buildings changes depending on the year of construction completion. It leads to increased energy consumption of buildings and significant financial burden on users. Thus, this study has calculated the thermal insulation performance of 86 apartments quantitatively, using temperature difference ratio and sensible heat flux. Also, energy consumption characteristics depending on the year of construction completion and thermal insulation performance were analyzed by comparatively analyzing the results of insulation performance evaluation and heating costs. The analysis results are as follows. As for thermal insulation performance, it was around 70% lower in the apartments completed before 1985, compared to apartments completed after 2010. As for heating costs, the apartments with the highest heating cost incurred 1.5 higher heating cost than the apartment with the lowest heating cost. In terms of the insulation performance evaluation, the difference was 2.5-fold.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.119-129
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• 2007

In January 2005, the BTL private investment project was introduced in the Korean construction market as part of the plan to provide high-quality public service and expand the required facilities in a timely manner. Nonetheless, problems such as the low earning rate at the beginning of the business, burden of service compared to the cost of the proposed business, and limitations of the local small and medium-sized companies in relation to their participation in the project arose. The LCC analysis system for the BTL projects was developed as part of efforts toward efficiently investigating the investment eligibility. Specifically, methods for LCC analysis were selected for each stage of the BTL project in relation to the requests of experts for military residential facilities and public educational facilities. Variables were then extracted to derive an accurate analysis value, LCC for the 5 cost items (initial investment cost, operating expenses, maintenance expenses, energy cost, and disposal cost), analyzed, and system enabling comparative analysis for single and multiple initiatives by year and item, developed. Thus, we have to clearly require the accumulation of data to examine the appropriateness of the results of LCC analysis based on data and results.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.45-47
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• 2022

Mobile edge computing (MEC), which enables mobile terminals to offload computational tasks to a server located at the user's edge, is considered an effective way to reduce the heavy computational burden and achieve efficient computational offloading. In this paper, we study a multi-user MEC system in which multiple user devices (UEs) can offload computation to the MEC server via a wireless channel. To solve the resource allocation and task offloading problem, we take the total cost of latency and energy consumption of all UEs as our optimization objective. To minimize the total cost of the considered MEC system, we propose an DRL-based method to solve the resource allocation problem in wireless MEC. Specifically, we propose a Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C)-based scheme. Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C) is applied to this framework and compared with DQN, and Double Q-Learning simulation results show that this scheme significantly reduces the total cost compared to other resource allocation schemes

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.171-186
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• 2007

Critical issues in the development targets for the future fast reactor(FR) cycle system, including sodium-cooled FR were to ensure safety assurance, efficient utilization of resources, reduction of environmental burden, assurance of nuclear non-proliferation, and economic competitiveness. A promising design concept of sodium-cooled fast reactor JSFR is proposed aiming at fully satisfaction of the development targets for the next generation nuclear energy system. A roadmap toward JSFR commercialization is described, to be followed up in a new framework of the Fast reactor Cycle Technology development(FaCT) Project launched in 2006.