The EU strives to lower greenhouse gas emissions. To reach this goal, many energy intensive processes in the residential sector such as heating and transportation will be electrified using heat pumps and electric vehicles (EVs) respectively. Simultaneously, a transition of electricity generation to sustainable sources will take place, necessitating an increased adoption of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems.

The adoption of PV systems, heat pumps and EVs, also known as low carbon technologies (LCTs), can increase three-phase unbalance in low voltage (LV) distribution networks as many of these components will be connected to a single phase of the three-phase network. Threephase unbalance is undesirable in a three-phase system, as it causes among others, energy losses and a suboptimal use of network capacity.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of different combinations and penetration levels of LCTs on three-phase unbalance in different real LV distribution networks through simulations and how unbalance is affected by LCT location, season and LCT control schemes.

Simulations were performed on six different grids, varying in level of urbanization and loading, with increasing levels of LCT penetration (0%, 50%, 80%, 100%). In these simulations, LCTs were integrated in varying combinations (PV & EV, PV & HP and PV & EV & HP). For every simulation, the maximum and mean voltage unbalance factor (VUF) was determined. Seasonal effects and the effect of an LCT control scheme were also evaluated.

Simulations showed that the voltage unbalance factor exceeded the legal limit of 3% for two of the six grids for high levels of LCT penetration when all LCTs are integrated. Combining all three LCTs resulted in the highest unbalance levels. Varying the locations of the LCTs resulted in significant differences in unbalance levels. Comparing a winter week with a summer week, the overall unbalance is similar, however, the contribution of the PV systems to the unbalance is increased, while the contribution of EV chargers and heat pumps is decreased.
The effect of the LCT control scheme was limited.

As the integration of LCTs will increase considerably in the near future, three-phase unbalance levels exceeding the limit of 3% will occur more often. To prevent unbalance levels from structurally exceeding the legal limit of 3%, more effective control schemes should be designed and implemented.

Until now parameter analysers for Organ-on-Chips (OoCs) have needed bulky multi-probe setups that do not fit in biological research labs. For this reason a bachelor graduation project was proposed to get one of the sensors designed by the Electronic Components, Technology and Materials group (ECTM) out of the lab and into the hands of potential end users. This thesis is one of three from that project, and describes the calibration and user interface components of the portable parameter analyzer that is developed for the OoC sensor.

First, an analysis is performed on the amplifier design that was given with the sensor. The analysis showed that the biggest sources of error in the overall gain are the offset and gain error, while non-linearity was not significant. Therefore, a two-point calibration method was deemed sufficient for the amplifier calibration. It is performed by taking two reference voltages as input of the amplifier, and measuring the corresponding output. With those points the actual gain and offset voltage can be calculated and corrected in measurements.

Because of circumstances it was not possible to test in a lab environment whether the amplifier and the two-point method would meet the requirements. Therefore a second calibration method is proposed, the `sweep' method. For each input voltage step the corresponding output voltage is measured. This mapping can be stored in memory, and any future measurement can be looked up to find the correct voltage. The sweep method can also be used with a slight modification of the current hardware in order to simply plot the gain of the amplifier, to verify that it is linear as intended.

Because the portable parameter analyzer is operated remotely, there was a need to develop a communication protocol on top of the Bluetooth link, in order to allow for parallel development of the GUI and embedded software on the analyzer. Once the communication between GUI and analyzer was defined, it was also possible for the other group to calculate the power consumption of the communication module.

Finally, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) needs to be developed that can interact with the analyzer (connect, change settings, retrieve data, etc.) and it should display and store the measured data. A framework called Qt is chosen for developing the GUI, and a graphical design was made. Two modules are implemented in the GUI: A Bluetooth scanner to connect to the analyzer, and a way to plot data from the analyzer.