EcoBlock: Grid Impacts, Scaling, and Resilience

Widespread deployment of EcoBlocks has the potential to transform today's electricity system into one that is more resilient, flexible, efficient and sustainable. In this vision, the system will consist of self- su cient, renewable-powered, block-scale entities that can deliberately adjust their net power exchange and can optimize performance, maintain stability, support each other, or disconnect entirely from the grid as needed. This report is intended as an independent analysis of the potential relationships, both constructive and adverse, between EcoBlocks and the grid

Tendering Universal Service Obligations in Liberalized Network Industries

In the past decades, several countries have introduced reverse auctions for allocating universal service or public mission subsidies in various industries. Examples include urban transport, air transport and telecommunications. Recently, such mechanisms have also been envisioned in liberalized postal markets. Issuing an invitation to tender for obligations in otherwise liberalized markets significantly differs from auctioning off a monopolistic provision of services or goods (competition for the market), as is e.g. the case with spectrum auctions in the telecommunications sector. We discuss the rationale for introducing such a regulatory regime as well as conceptual and practical issues concerning its implementation. It turns out that designing an efficient tender for universal service subsidies in liberalized markets is considerably more difficult than tendering e.g. a monopoly franchise. A first reason is that the cost assessment is more complex in the former case as future competitive market outcomes have to be anticipated; in the case with franchise bidding, at least the number of competitors is given by the tender itself. Hence, revenue effects caused by competitors are easier to calculate. Second, the threat of a winner’s moral hazard requires more detailed ex ante regulations. These raise the social cost of universal service provision. Compared to direct designation of universal services with ex post compensation, tendering causes a series of fundamental concerns and trade-offs that make the application of auctions less attractive than in other sectors.Procurement, Tendering, Reverse Auctions, Universal Service Obligation, Liberalization, Network Industries

Asymptotically idempotent aggregation operators for trust management in multi-agent systems

The study of trust management in multi-agent system, especially distributed, has grown over the last years. Trust is a complex subject that has no general consensus in literature, but has emerged the importance of reasoning about it computationally. Reputation systems takes into consideration the history of an entity’s actions/behavior in order to compute trust, collecting and aggregating ratings from members in a community. In this scenario the aggregation problem becomes fundamental, in particular depending on the environment. In this paper we describe a technique based on a class of asymptotically idempotent aggregation operators, suitable particulary for distributed anonymous environments

Challenges to the Integration of Renewable Resources at High System Penetration

Successfully integrating renewable resources into the electric grid at penetration levels to meet a 33 percent Renewables Portfolio Standard for California presents diverse technical and organizational challenges. This report characterizes these challenges by coordinating problems in time and space, balancing electric power on a range of scales from microseconds to decades and from individual homes to hundreds of miles. Crucial research needs were identified related to grid operation, standards and procedures, system design and analysis, and incentives, and public engagement in each scale of analysis. Performing this coordination on more refined scales of time and space independent of any particular technology, is defined as a “smart grid.” “Smart” coordination of the grid should mitigate technical difficulties associated with intermittent and distributed generation, support grid stability and reliability, and maximize benefits to California ratepayers by using the most economic technologies, design and operating approaches

Synergy Modelling and Financial Valuation : the contribution of Fuzzy Integrals.

Les méthodes d’évaluation financière utilisent des opérateurs d’agrégation reposant sur les propriétés d’additivité (sommations, intégrales de Lebesgue). De ce fait, elles occultent les phénomènes de renforcement et de synergie (ou de redondance) qui peuvent exister entre les éléments d’un ensemble organisé. C’est particulièrement le cas en ce qui concerne le problème d’évaluation financière du patrimoine d’une entreprise : en effet, en pratique, il est souvent mis en évidence une importante différence de valorisation entre l’approche « valeur de la somme des éléments » (privilégiant le point de vue financier) et l’approche « somme de la valeur des différents éléments » (privilégiant le point de vue comptable). Les possibilités offertes par des opérateurs d’agrégation comme les intégrales floues (Sugeno, Grabisch, Choquet) permettent, au plan théorique, de modéliser l’effet de synergie. La présente étude se propose de valider empiriquement les modalités d’implémentation opérationnelle de ce modèle à partir d’un échantillon d’entreprises cotées ayant fait l’objet d’une évaluation lors d’une OPA.Financial valuation methods use additive aggregation operators. But a patrimony should be regarded as an organized set, and additivity makes it impossible for these aggregation operators to formalize such phenomena as synergy or mutual inhibition between the patrimony’s components. This paper considers the application of fuzzy measure and fuzzy integrals (Sugeno, Grabisch, Choquet) to financial valuation. More specifically, we show how integration with respect to a non additive measure can be used to handle positive or negative synergy in value construction.Fuzzy measure; Fuzzy integral; Aggregation operator; Synergy; Financial valuation;

Critical Evaluation of Cross-Border Infrastructure Projects in Asia

This paper attempts to fill gaps faced by policymakers and practitioners in the evaluation of cross-border infrastructure projects. It first defines what constitutes cross-border infrastructure projects, and then outlines an analytical framework and criteria to evaluate them. The criteria identify additionalities and externalities specific to cross-border infrastructure projects that need to be stressed in covering broader and indirect impacts that are not usually captured in the analysis of national projects. Then the paper examines to what extent the defined criteria are applicable in evaluating recent cross-border infrastructure projects. It also reports on emerging impacts patterns evidenced in relevant studies. The paper draws lessons and implications for design and implementation of cross-border infrastructure projects.asian infrastructure projects design implementation; asian trade costs; economic analysis infrastructure projects

Intangibles mismeasurements, synergy, and accounting numbers : a note.

For the last two decades, authors (e.g. Ohlson, 1995; Lev, 2000, 2001) have regularly pointed out the enforcement of limitations by traditional accounting frameworks on financial reporting informativeness. Consistent with this claim, it has been then argued that accounting finds one of its major limits in not allowing for direct recognition of synergy occurring amongst the firm intangible and tangible items (Casta, 1994; Casta & Lesage, 2001). Although the firm synergy phenomenon has been widely documented in the recent accounting literature (see for instance, Hand & Lev, 2004; Lev, 2001) research hitherto has failed to provide a clear approach to assess directly and account for such a henceforth fundamental corporate factor. The objective of this paper is to raise and examine, but not address exhaustively, the specific issues induced by modelling the synergy occurring amongst the firm assets whilst pointing out the limits of traditional accounting valuation tools. Since financial accounting valuation methods are mostly based on the mathematical property of additivity, and consequently may occult the perspective of regarding the firm as an organized set of assets, we propose an alternative valuation approach based on non-additive measures issued from the Choquet's (1953) and Sugeno's (1997) framework. More precisely, we show how this integration technique with respect to a non-additive measure can be used to cope with either positive or negative synergy in a firm value-building process and then discuss its potential future implications for financial reporting.Financial reporting; accounting goodwill; assets synergy; non-additive measures; Choquet’s framework;

Des observations à la construction d'un modèle de simulation de la dynamique urbaine : une approche inductive

International audienceThrough this paper, we chose to present a modelling concept the aim of which is the simulation of the intra-urban location dynamics. This concept includes some characteristics which relate it to the synergetic models as well as to the micro-simulation ones. In the first part of this paper, we describe and examine the modelling concept to focus in a second part on a more detailed presentation of one aspect of the model concerning the measure of the attractiveness of the neighbourhoods of a town.Dans cet article, nous avons choisi de présenter un concept de modélisation dont le but est la simulation de la dynamique des localisations d'activités en milieu intra-urbain. De par ses caractéristiques, ce concept se rattache tant aux modèles synergétiques qu'à ceux de micro-simulation. Dans la première partie de cet article, nous décrivons et commentons le concept de modélisation proposé pour, dans une seconde partie, s'attacher plus particulièrement à la présentation détaillée d'un aspect du modèle, à savoir la mesure de l'attractivité des quartiers d'une ville

How to score alternatives when criteria are scored on an ordinal scale

We address in this paper the problem of scoring alternatives when they are evaluated with respect to several criteria on a finite ordinal scale $E$. We show that in general, the ordinal scale $E$ has to be refined or shrunk in order to be able to represent the preference of the decision maker by an aggregation operator belonging to the family of mean operators. The paper recalls previous theoretical results of the author giving necessary and sufficient conditions for a representation of preferences, and then focusses on describing practical algorithms and examples.ordinal scale, aggregation of scores, mean operator, refinement of scale