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European Union ; FEDER Funds through the Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE program ; National Funds through FCT Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia ; European Union: 318912 ; National Funds through FCT Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2014 ; National Funds through FCT Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia: PTDC/SEN-ENR/122174/2010 ; National Funds through FCT Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia: SFRH/BD/80183/2011 ; The increase of electricity demand in Brazil, the lack of the next major hydroelectric reservoirs implementation, and the growth of environmental concerns lead utilities to seek an improved system planning to meet these energy needs. The great diversity of economic, social, climatic, and cultural conditions in the country have been causing a more difficult planning of the power system. The work presented in this paper concerns the development of an algorithm that aims studying the influence of the issues mentioned in load curves. Focus is given to residential consumers. The consumption device with highest influence in the load curve is also identified. The methodology developed gains increasing importance in the system planning and operation, namely in the smart grids context.

European Union's ; FEDER Funds through COMPETE program ; National Funds through FCT ; GID-MicroRede ; COMPETE under FEDER via QREN Programme ; European Union's: 318912 ; National Funds through FCT: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER ; National Funds through FCT: PEstOE/EEPUI0760/2014 ; National Funds through FCT: PTDC/SEN-ENR/122174/2010 ; GID-MicroRede: 34086 ; Several approaches have been proposed according the concepts of smart grids and the smart home is one of them. A smart home can be defined as a system with network communication between all devices allowing the control, monitoring and remote access of the management system, progressing in a generalized way of all loads for an individual way, through individual management of loads. The paper proposes a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) management methodology to be included in the Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition House Intelligent Management (SHIM). SHIM is a simulation platform developed and implemented in the Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support Research Center (GECAD) to support the control and management of appliances of end consumers. The main goal of the presented work is to develop a HVAC management methodology consisting in a priority system that classifies the importance of the HVAC in each instant. The priority classification depends directly on the difference between the room temperature and the user desired temperature, in order to take measures to optimize consumption during events with power consumption limitations maintaining user comfort.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Honorio Coronado, E. N., Dexter, K. G., Pennington, R. T., Chave, J., Lewis, S. L., Alexiades, M. N., Alvarez, E., Alves de Oliveira, A., Amaral, I. L., Araujo-Murakami, A., Arets, E. J. M. M., Aymard, G. A., Baraloto, C., Bonal, D., Brienen, R., Cerón, C., Cornejo Valverde, F., Di Fiore, A., Farfan-Rios, W., Feldpausch, T. R., Higuchi, N., Huamantupa-Chuquimaco, I., Laurance, S. G., Laurance, W. F., López-Gonzalez, G., Marimon, B. S., Marimon-Junior, B. H., Monteagudo Mendoza, A., Neill, D., Palacios Cuenca, W., Peñuela Mora, M. C., Pitman, N. C. A., Prieto, A., Quesada, C. A., Ramirez Angulo, H., Rudas, A., Ruschel, A. R., Salinas Revilla, N., Salomão, R. P., Segalin de Andrade, A., Silman, M. R., Spironello, W., ter Steege, H., Terborgh, J., Toledo, M., Valenzuela Gamarra, L., Vieira, I. C. G., Vilanova Torre, E., Vos, V., Phillips, O. L. (2015), Phylogenetic diversity of Amazonian tree communities. Diversity and Distributions, 21: 1295–1307. doi:10.1111/ddi.12357, which has been published in final form at 10.1111/ddi.12357 ; Aim: To examine variation in the phylogenetic diversity (PD) of tree communities across geographical and environmental gradients in Amazonia. Location: Two hundred and eighty-three c. 1 ha forest inventory plots from across Amazonia. Methods: We evaluated PD as the total phylogenetic branch length across species in each plot (PDss), the mean pairwise phylogenetic distance between species (MPD), the mean nearest taxon distance (MNTD) and their equivalents standardized for species richness (ses.PDss, ses.MPD, ses.MNTD). We compared PD of tree communities growing (1) on substrates of varying geological age; and (2) in environments with varying ecophysiological barriers to growth and survival. Results: PDss is strongly positively correlated with species richness (SR), whereas MNTD has a negative correlation. Communities on geologically young- and intermediate-aged substrates (western and central Amazonia respectively) have the highest SR, and therefore the highest PDss and the lowest MNTD. We find that the youngest and oldest substrates (the latter on the Brazilian and Guiana Shields) have the highest ses.PDss and ses.MNTD. MPD and ses.MPD are strongly correlated with how evenly taxa are distributed among the three principal angiosperm clades and are both highest in western Amazonia. Meanwhile, seasonally dry tropical forest (SDTF) and forests on white sands have low PD, as evaluated by any metric. Main conclusions: High ses.PDss and ses.MNTD reflect greater lineage diversity in communities. We suggest that high ses.PDss and ses.MNTD in western Amazonia results from its favourable, easy-to-colonize environment, whereas high values in the Brazilian and Guianan Shields may be due to accumulation of lineages over a longer period of time. White-sand forests and SDTF are dominated by close relatives from fewer lineages, perhaps reflecting ecophysiological barriers that are difficult to surmount evolutionarily. Because MPD and ses.MPD do not reflect lineage diversity per se, we suggest that PDss, ses.PDss and ses.MNTD may be the most useful diversity metrics for setting large-scale conservation priorities. ; FINCyT - PhD studentship ; School of Geography of the University of Leeds ; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh ; Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) ; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation ; European Union's Seventh Framework Programme ; ERC ; CNPq/PELD ; NSF - Fellowship