A review of microgrid development in the United States – A decade of progress on policies, demonstrations, controls, and software tools

Microgrids have become increasingly popular in the United States. Supported by favorable federal and local policies, microgrid projects can provide greater energy stability and resilience within a project site or community. This paper reviews major federal, state, and utility-level policies driving microgrid development in the United States. Representative U.S. demonstration projects are selected and their technical characteristics and non-technical features are introduced. The paper discusses trends in the technology development of microgrid systems as well as microgrid control methods and interactions within the electricity market. Software tools for microgrid design, planning, and performance analysis are illustrated with each tool's core capability. Finally, the paper summarizes the successes and lessons learned during the recent expansion of the U.S. microgrid industry that may serve as a reference for other countries developing their own microgrid industries

Understanding Economic Dynamics Behind Growth-Inequality Relationships

In this paper, a Dynamic General Equilibrium (DGE) model of growth-inequality relationships, with missing credit markets, knowledge spillover and self-employed agents, is calibrated to New Zealand data. The model explains how two distinct policy shocks involving redistribution and immigration imply, subsequently, two completely opposite outcomes. Agents' inability to borrow aggravates a negative macroeconomic effect of heterogeneity on growth. Redistribution mitigates that effect but creates microeconomic disincentives on saving and work-effort. Consequently, immigration shocks that perturb variance of efficiency induce a negative growth-inequality relationship, while redistribution shocks, in New Zealand's case, produce larger fluctuations in incentives than in macro benefits, implying a positive growth-inequality relationship.Heterogeneous agents, externality, income inequality, growth, progressive redistribution.

Animal Spirits, Lumpy Investment, and the Business Cycle

Empirical literature on investment and output dynamics is characterized by two robust stylized facts at the macro level. First, investment is considerably more volatile than output. Second, fluctuations of output and investment are highly synchronized. Furthermore, at the micro level, firm investment appears to be very lumpy. In this paper, we ask whether the two macroeconomic stylized facts above can be explained in terms of bounded rationality (i.e. "animal spirits") in firm investment behavior and the ensuing lumpiness in investment patterns. To address this question, we present an evolutionary, agent-based, model of industry dynamics and firm investment behavior. The economy is composed of consumers and firms, who belong to two industries. Firms in the first industry perform R&D and produce heterogeneous machine tools. Firms in the second industry invest in new machines and produce a consumption good. Lumpiness of firm investment is not grounded on non-convex adjustment costs, but on "animal spirits": manufacturing firms invest only if they expect a large growth in the demand for their product. Simulations show that the model is able to generate - as emergent properties - Keynesian endogenous business cycles and to reproduce the foregoing empirical macro output-investment regularities at the business cycle frequencies.Evolutionary Models, ACE Models, Animal Spirits, Lumpy Investment, Output Fluctuations, Endogenous Business Cycles

Building subnational debt markets in developing and transition economies : a framework for analysis, policy reform, and assistance strategy

Subnational debt markets can be a powerful force in a country's development. Through delegated monitoring by financial intermediaries and through debt placed directly with investors, subnational debt markets account for about 5 percent of GDP in Argentina and Brazil. But they remain embryonic in most developing and transition economies. To resolve a potential clash between the increased financing needs of subnational entities and the limited development of domestic subnational debt markets, it is critical to support the orderly, efficient emergence of such debt markets. As a framework for policy reform, the following steps (mirroring typical weaknesses) are prerequisites for developing a country's subnational debt market: reducing moral hazard, improving market transparency, strengthening market governance, establishing a level playing field, and developing local capacity for accounting, budgeting, and financial management. In countries where the government shows a clear commitment to market development, says the author, the World Bank should support the framework needed for policy-based operations that establish hard budget constraints. In doing so, the Bank should concentrate on 1) supporting national and local capacity building in those areas essential for developing a subnational debt market; and 2) financing specific subnational projects with strictly nonrecourse loans. At the same time, the Bank should offer a variety of lending and guarantee instruments that encourage private financing for investments by subnational entities-including, for example, equity participation in (or lines of credit or partial credit guarantees to) financial intermediaries specializing in subnational investment finance or in funds for financing local infrastructure.Municipal Financial Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Strategic Debt Management,Banks&Banking Reform,National Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research

Global supply chains of high value low volume products

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Evidence and Ideology in Macroeconomics: The Case of Investment Cycles

The paper reports the principal findings of a long term research project on the description and explanation of business cycles. The research strongly confirmed the older view that business cycles have large systematic components that take the form of investment cycles. These quasi-periodic movements can be represented as low order, stochastic, dynamic processes with complex eigenvalues. Specifically, there is a fixed investment cycle of about 8 years and an inventory cycle of about 4 years. Maximum entropy spectral analysis was employed for the description of the cycles and continuous time econometrics for the explanatory models. The central explanatory mechanism is the second order accelerator, which incorporates adjustment costs both in relation to the capital stock and the rate of investment. By means of parametric resonance it was possible to show, both theoretically and empirically how cycles aggregate from the micro to the macro level. The same mathematical tool was also used to explain the international convergence of cycles. I argue that the theory of investment cycles was abandoned for ideological, not for evidential reasons. Methodological issues are also discussed

Enforcement in Dynamic Spectrum Access Systems

The spectrum access rights granted by the Federal government to spectrum users come with the expectation of protection from harmful interference. As a consequence of the growth of wireless demand and services of all types, technical progress enabling smart agile radio networks, and on-going spectrum management reform, there is both a need and opportunity to use and share spectrum more intensively and dynamically. A key element of any framework for managing harmful interference is the mechanism for enforcement of those rights. Since the rights to use spectrum and to protection from harmful interference vary by band (licensed/unlicensed, legacy/newly reformed) and type of use/users (primary/secondary, overlay/underlay), it is reasonable to expect that the enforcement mechanisms may need to vary as well.\ud \ud In this paper, we present a taxonomy for evaluating alternative mechanisms for enforcing interference protection for spectrum usage rights, with special attention to the potential changes that may be expected from wider deployment of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) systems. Our exploration of how the design of the enforcement regime interacts with and influences the incentives of radio operators under different rights regimes and market scenarios is intended to assist in refining thinking about appropriate access rights regimes and how best to incentivize investment and growth in more efficient and valuable uses of the radio frequency spectrum

Application of a simplified thermal-electric model of a sodium-nickel chloride battery energy storage system to a real case residential prosumer

Recently, power system customers have changed the way they interact with public networks, playing a more and more active role. End-users first installed local small-size generating units, and now they are being equipped with storage devices to increase the self-consumption rate. By suitably managing local resources, the provision of ancillary services and aggregations among several end-users are expected evolutions in the near future. In the upcoming market of household-sized storage devices, sodium-nickel chloride technology seems to be an interesting alternative to lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries. To accurately investigate the operation of the NaNiCl2 battery system at the residential level, a suitable thermoelectric model has been developed by the authors, starting from the results of laboratory tests. The behavior of the battery internal temperature has been characterized. Then, the designed model has been used to evaluate the economic profitability in installing a storage system in the case that end-users are already equipped with a photovoltaic unit. To obtain realistic results, real field measurements of customer consumption and solar radiation have been considered. A concrete interest in adopting the sodium-nickel chloride technology at the residential level is confirmed, taking into account the achievable benefits in terms of economic income, back-up supply, and increased indifference to the evolution of the electricity market

"The Finance Constraint Theory of Money: A Progress Report"

The theory of money that emerged from the Keynesian Revolution is coming increasingly into question, and a variety of new theories are being put forward as alternatives. The most promising is one I will call the finance constraint theory. This paper is a progress report on its development. It is particularly fitting that this progress report appear in afestschrift for S.C. Tsiang, as he has been one of the most cogent critics of the conventional theory and a major architect of the finance constraint alternative. The issues a theory of money should address may be divided into three broad areas: (1) What is money and how is it special (2) What is the connection between money and its various "prices" (the general price level, interest rates, and exchange rates)? (3) What is the role of money in economic fluctuations? After some introductory material, each of these areas will be taken up in turn.