The concept of sustainability, with a focus on energy, has emerged as a central tenet in addressing the mounting global challenges of environmental degradation and resource depletion. Indicators of sustainability focusing on energy are crucial tools used to assess and monitor progress toward achieving a more sustainable energy system. These indicators provide valuable insights into the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of energy practices and their long-term impacts. By analyzing and understanding these indicators, policymakers, businesses, and communities can make informed decisions, formulate effective policies, and steer their efforts toward a more sustainable energy future. These indicators serve as navigational guides, steering the world toward energy practices that support both present needs and the well-being of future generations. In this paper, the concept of sustainability and measurement indexes used are reviewed, focusing on energy factors. The focus of the discussion presented here is related to an assessment of the possibilities for improving energy efficiency and evaluating the indicators that are used to measure whether the desired levels of sustainability are being achieved.

In this paper, a Fractional Order Power System controller (FOPSS) is designed, and its performance and robustness are experimentally evaluated by tests in a 10 kVA laboratory scale power system. The FOPSS design methodology is based on the tuning of an additional design variable, namely the fractional order of the controller transfer function. This design variable is tuned aiming to obtain a tradeoff between satisfactory damping of dominant oscillating mode and improved closed-loop system robustness. For controller synthesis, transfer function models were estimated from data collected at selected operating points and subsequently applied for the controller design and for obtaining upper bounds estimates on the operating-point depends on plant uncertainties. The experimental results show that the FOPPS was able to obtain a robust performance for the considered set of the power system operating conditions.

In this paper, we present a low-cost, stand-alone sensory platform developed for in situ monitoring of environmental parameters, for use in the Amazon region in the north of Brazil. The mission of the platform is to perform monitoring and identification of overirradiance (solar irradiance > 1000 W/m²) and extreme overirradiance events (solar irradiance > 1300 W/m²) using a photovoltaic based irradiance sensor. The sensory platform was built using the ESP8266 microcontroller, an open embedded computer capable of Wi-Fi communication using the IEEE 802.11 standard, and small photovoltaic modules, air temperature, atmospheric pressure, voltage, and current sensors, enabling the development of a low-cost system (€70/R$350.00 BRL). Calibration and tests were conducted at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), Belém campus, Pará, where the platform measured an extreme overirradiance of 1321 W/m² at a low-latitude (1 °S) and low altitude (7 m above sea level).