RESUMO As energias renováveis são alternativas para substituição dos combustíveis fósseis sendo crucial para a sustentabilidade do setor agrícola, e importante alternativa para o bombeamento de água na irrigação. Assim, a compreensão das receitas e despesas são fundamentais na viabilidade econômica. Com isso, o objetivo do presente estudo foi verificar o comportamento dos indicadores econômicos em sistema de energia solar off-grid para irrigação com base em diferentes cenários. Foram desenvolvidos projetos fotovoltaicos para diferentes potências de irrigação variando de 0,736 até 22,1 kW, e avaliado os custos para implantação e operação, a ocorrência de economia de escala e verificado o custo nivelado de energia para cada potência analisada. Além disso, foram realizadas análises de sensibilidade, considerando a variação do preço de produto e custo de investimento, para demonstrar as respostas em relação aos indicadores econômicos. Portanto, os projetos de energia fotovoltaicos apresentaram custos crescentes com aumento da potência, e o custo normalizado por kW seguiu uma economia de escala, já o custo nivelado de energia demonstrou viabilidade, exceto para a potência de 22,1 kW. As análises de sensibilidade demonstraram a rentabilidade para as configurações analisadas.

ABSTRACT Renewable energies are alternatives to replace fossil fuels and are crucial for the sustainability of the agricultural sector, besides being an important alternative for pumping water in irrigation. Thus, understanding revenues and expenses is fundamental in economic feasibility. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the behavior of economic indicators in off-grid solar energy system for irrigation based on different scenarios. Photovoltaic projects were developed for different irrigation powers ranging from 0.736 to 22.1 kW, and the costs for implementation and operation, as well as the occurrence of economy of scale were evaluated, and the levelized cost of energy for each power analyzed was determined. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed, considering the variation in product price and investment cost, to demonstrate the responses in relation to economic indicators. Photovoltaic energy projects showed increasing costs with the increase in power, and the normalized cost per kW followed an economy of scale, while the levelized cost of energy showed feasibility, except for the power of 22.1 kW. The sensitivity analyses showed profitability for the analyzed configurations.

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to present and to evaluate methodologies for the estimation of soil resistance to penetration (RP) using artificial intelligence prediction techniques. In order to do so, a data base with values of physical-water characteristics of the soils available in the literature was used, and the performances of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) were evaluated. The models generated from the ANNs were implemented through the multilayer perceptron with backpropagation algorithm of Matlab software, varying the number of neurons in the input and intermediate layers. For the procedure from SVM, the RapidMiner software was used, varying input variables, the kernel function and the coefficients of these functions. The efficiency of the techniques was analyzed by the ratio 1:1, and later, compared to the Busscher non-linear model (Busscher, 1990). The results showed that the artificial intelligence models (ANN and SVM) are efficient and have predictive capacity superior to the Busscher model, under data conditions of soils with textural classes and different, and similar managements, although with higher performance index values for conditions of soils of the same textural class exposed to the same management.

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of less accurate analysis methods of slope stability, in order to reduce the number of operations used by the most accurate methods available in the literature. The study evaluated four methods for calculating slope stability. Fellenius (FELLENIUS, 1936), Bishop (BISHOP, 1955), Simplified Bishop (BISHOP & MORGENSTERN, 1960) and Simplified Janbu (JANBU, 1973) were compared with the Spencer method (SPENCER, 1967), which is considered an accurate method for calculating the factor of safety (FS). The procedure was performed in scenarios with different soil groups according to the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS) (ASTM 2011), heights and slope inclinations, and under conditions of reservoir subject to fast and slow emptying. Thus, comparative analyses were made using the correlation index “r”, the accuracy index “d” (WILLMOTT et al, 1985) and the performance index “c” (CAMARGO & SENTELHAS, 1997). The methods that had optimal performance for the analyzed conditions were the Simplified Bishop, the Simplified Janbu and the Bishop methods; the Simplified Bishop method obtained a correlation coefficient of 99%. Thus, they can be used as alternative methods to replace the Spencer method in the analysis of slope stability on earth dams.