The Spanish Electricity Industry: Plus ca Change

Working paper públicado por el Instituto de Economía Industrial. serie nº 317,IDEI Working papersIn this paper we describe the Spanish electricity industry and its current regulatory regime. Special emphasis is given to the description and discussion of market design issues (including stranded cost recovery), the evolution of market structure, investment in generation capacity and network activities. We also provide a critical assessment of the 1997 regulatory reform, which did not succeed in introducing effective competition, but retained an opaque regulation which has been subject to continuous governmental interventionism. Furthermore, the implementation of the Kyoto agreement could show the lack of robustness of the regulatory regime

Systems design analysis applied to launch vehicle configuration

As emphasis shifts from optimum-performance aerospace systems to least lift-cycle costs, systems designs must seek, adapt, and innovate cost improvement techniques in design through operations. The systems design process of concept, definition, and design was assessed for the types and flow of total quality management techniques that may be applicable in a launch vehicle systems design analysis. Techniques discussed are task ordering, quality leverage, concurrent engineering, Pareto's principle, robustness, quality function deployment, criteria, and others. These cost oriented techniques are as applicable to aerospace systems design analysis as to any large commercial system

Multi-objective energy storage power dispatching using plug-in vehicles in a smart-microgrid

This paper describes a multi-objective power dispatching problem that uses Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) as storage units. We formulate the energy storage planning as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem, respecting PEV requirements, minimizing three different objectives and analyzing three different criteria. Two novel cost-to-variability indicators, based on Sharpe Ratio, are introduced for analyzing the volatility of the energy storage schedules. By adding these additional criteria, energy storage planning is optimized seeking to minimize the following: total Microgrid (MG) costs; PEVs batteries usage; maximum peak load; difference between extreme scenarios and two Sharpe Ratio indices. Different scenarios are considered, which are generated with the use of probabilistic forecasting, since prediction involves inherent uncertainty. Energy storage planning scenarios are scheduled according to information provided by lower and upper bounds extracted from probabilistic forecasts. A MicroGrid (MG) scenario composed of two renewable energy resources, a wind energy turbine and photovoltaic cells, a residential MG user and different PEVs is analyzed. Candidate non-dominated solutions are searched from the pool of feasible solutions obtained during different Branch and Bound optimizations. Pareto fronts are discussed and analyzed for different energy storage scenarios. Perhaps the most important conclusion from this study is that schedules that minimize the total system cost may increase maximum peak load and its volatility over different possible scenarios, therefore may be less robust

The Spanish Electricity Industry: Plus ça change …

In this paper we describe the Spanish electricity industry and its current regulatory regime. Special emphasis is given to the description and discussion of market design issues (including stranded cost recovery), the evolution of market structure, investment in generation capacity and network activities. We also provide a critical assessment of the 1997 regulatory reform, which did not succeed in introducing effective competition, but retained an opaque regulation which has been subject to continuous governmental interventionism. Furthermore, the implementation of the Kyoto agreement could show the lack of robustness of the regulatory regime.Spain, electricity, market design, generation, network activities, regulation

Time-Related Individual Differences.

Post-modernism has brought about changing demands with respect to time in work organisations. Whilst the impact of this has been given some attention at both the organisational and individual level far less has been given to a consideration of the extent to which individual differences might moderate the impact of such changes. In order to proceed with this line of enquiry it is necessary first to be able to measure individual differences related to time. This paper, through an analysis and synthesis of existing measures of individual attitudes/approaches to time, a subsequent qualitative study, and large quantitative survey study (N=683) identifies a five factor structure for time-related individual differences (Time Personality) and reports on the development of five complementary measurement scales : Leisure Time Awareness, Punctuality, Planning, Polychronicity and Impatience. A series of reliability and validity studies indicate that the scales are psychometrically sound. The findings are discussed in the context of the role Time Personality might play in moderating the effects that differing organisational structures and changing work demands might have in organisational settings

A framework for smart production-logistics systems based on CPS and industrial IoT

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has received increasing attention from both academia and industry. However, several challenges including excessively long waiting time and a serious waste of energy still exist in the IIoT-based integration between production and logistics in job shops. To address these challenges, a framework depicting the mechanism and methodology of smart production-logistics systems is proposed to implement intelligent modeling of key manufacturing resources and investigate self-organizing configuration mechanisms. A data-driven model based on analytical target cascading is developed to implement the self-organizing configuration. A case study based on a Chinese engine manufacturer is presented to validate the feasibility and evaluate the performance of the proposed framework and the developed method. The results show that the manufacturing time and the energy consumption are reduced and the computing time is reasonable. This paper potentially enables manufacturers to deploy IIoT-based applications and improve the efficiency of production-logistics systems

A general framework integrating techniques for scheduling under uncertainty

Ces dernières années, de nombreux travaux de recherche ont porté sur la planification de tâches et l'ordonnancement sous incertitudes. Ce domaine de recherche comprend un large choix de modèles, techniques de résolution et systèmes, et il est difficile de les comparer car les terminologies existantes sont incomplètes. Nous avons cependant identifié des familles d'approches générales qui peuvent être utilisées pour structurer la littérature suivant trois axes perpendiculaires. Cette nouvelle structuration de l'état de l'art est basée sur la façon dont les décisions sont prises. De plus, nous proposons un modèle de génération et d'exécution pour ordonnancer sous incertitudes qui met en oeuvre ces trois familles d'approches. Ce modèle est un automate qui se développe lorsque l'ordonnancement courant n'est plus exécutable ou lorsque des conditions particulières sont vérifiées. Le troisième volet de cette thèse concerne l'étude expérimentale que nous avons menée. Au-dessus de ILOG Solver et Scheduler nous avons implémenté un prototype logiciel en C++, directement instancié de notre modèle de génération et d'exécution. Nous présentons de nouveaux problèmes d'ordonnancement probabilistes et une approche par satisfaction de contraintes combinée avec de la simulation pour les résoudre. ABSTRACT : For last years, a number of research investigations on task planning and scheduling under uncertainty have been conducted. This research domain comprises a large number of models, resolution techniques, and systems, and it is difficult to compare them since the existing terminologies are incomplete. However, we identified general families of approaches that can be used to structure the literature given three perpendicular axes. This new classification of the state of the art is based on the way decisions are taken. In addition, we propose a generation and execution model for scheduling under uncertainty that combines these three families of approaches. This model is an automaton that develops when the current schedule is no longer executable or when some particular conditions are met. The third part of this thesis concerns our experimental study. On top of ILOG Solver and Scheduler, we implemented a software prototype in C++ directly instantiated from our generation and execution model. We present new probabilistic scheduling problems and a constraintbased approach combined with simulation to solve some instances thereof

The Theorem of Proportionality in Mainstream Capital Theory: An Assessment of its Applicability

This paper surveys and assesses the empirical literature that bears on the applicability of the theorem of proportionality, which asserts that depreciation is proportional to the outstanding capital stock. All available evidence shows that: a) the rates of depreciation and retirements vary from year to year in response to changes in conventional economic forces like utilization, maintenance and repair, the prices of new capital goods, etc., and b) while the approximation of the distribution of depreciation rates by a single parameter may be characterized by simplicity and ease of use, at the same time it thwarts the advances that can be achieved by returning to a general equilibrium model centered on the time structure of capital and the useful lives of its components. For this reason, it is concluded that, the sooner this theorem is replaced by an endogenous theory of depreciation and replacement, the better for economic theory and policy.Capital longevity, replacement, depreciation, scrappage, maintenance, utilization, obsolescence