The present environmental and economic conditions call for the increased use of hybrid energy resources and, concurrently, recent developments in combined heat and power (CHP) systems enable their use at a domestic level. In this work, the optimal scheduling of electric and gas energy resources is achieved for a smart home (SH) which is equipped with a fuel cell-based micro-CHP system. The SH energy system has thermal and electrical loops that contain an auxiliary boiler, a battery energy storage system, and an electrical vehicle besides other typical loads. The optimal operational cost of the SH is achieved using the real coded genetic algorithm (RCGA) under various scenarios of utility tariff and availability of hybrid energy resources. The results compare different scenarios and point-out the conditions for economic operation of micro-CHP and hybrid energy systems for an SH.

We investigate characteristics of THz waves radiated from differently doped graphite samples excited by femtosecond laser pulses. Between n-type single-crystalline graphite and p-type polycrystalline graphite films, we observe the phase reversal of THz waves regardless of excitation energy variations around K-valley. In addition, variations in other parameters such as excitation fluence and azimuthal angle produce no changes in the phase of THz waves, which correlate well with the opposite dipole polarization between differently doped samples rather than unidirectional diffusive transport.