Abstracts of Invited and Selected Papers and Organized Symposia, WAEA Annual Meetings, San Francisco, California, July 6-8, 2005

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

A Multi-Agent System Simulation Model for Trusted Local Energy Markets

The energy market and electric grid play a major role in everyday life. Most areas in modern society, such as: communication, health, transportation, the financial system and many others; require electrical energy to operate properly. Traditionally energy grids operate in a centralized manner. Consumers are connected to centralized utilities in the grid and energy flows from producers to Consumers. However, the rising in popularity in Renewable Energy Sources (RES) such as photovoltaic panels installed in households, small commerce and small industry wide spread the use of distributed energy generation, which the main energy grid was not designed to support. One of the possible solutions for this problem is the creation of a Local Energy Market (LeM). A LeM is a market that operates in a small physical area such as a neighborhood. Traditional consumers can become active market participants under a LeM. That is possible because the LeM is structured in such a way as to enable small-scale negotiations and energy exchanges between participants, who traditionally would only be final consumers. The LeM is capable of dealing with distributed energy generation from RES because negotiations and distribution happen at a local level, thus reducing problems with the main grid. Furthermore, the participation in the local market can reduce energy costs or even create profits for consumers, while contributing to easy the management of the grid and associated technical losses. This work explores the concept of LeM and is focused on two main objectives: designing and developing a system that allows the simulation of LeM, and designing and developing a mechanism that allows trusted negotiations in this market. To accomplish these objectives a Multi-Agent System (MAS) architecture is proposed to model and allow the simulation of LeM. Furthermore to support the market it is also proposed a trust model used to evaluate the behavior of participants and detecting faulty or malicious activities. The developed MAS models a LeM based on a Smart Grid, that is an energy grid with a cyber-physical system with smart meters and communications mechanisms. The MAS was developed with agents to model sensors, market participants and a Market Interaction Manager (MIM) agent that is responsible for managing the negotiations and for applying trust mechanisms. The trust mechanism was designed to attribute a dynamic trust value to each participant, which is reviewed during the all negotiation period. This evaluation of the participant’s trust is based on the analysis of historical data, contextual data, such as weather conditions, and by using forecasting methods to predict the participant expected behavior, allowing to penalize the ones that are exhibiting a questionable behavior in the market. A case study simulation was made with the objective of understanding how the proposed trust mechanism performed, and how the use of different forecasting methods can interfere with it. The results obtained allowed us to conclude that the trust methodology is able to update the trust of each participant, during the negotiation period, and when paired with a well performing forecasting mechanism it is able to achieve a trusted evaluation of the participants behavior. Taking into consideration these results we believe that the proposed trust methodology is capable of providing a valuable trust assessment when used by the MIM agent. This Master Thesis is developed within the scope of a project called Secure interactions and trusted Participation in local Electricity Trading (SPET), a FCT-SAICT2017 funded Research & Development project. SPET project envisions the development of a MAS that is designed to model and simulate the operations of a LeM, taking a focus on security and market trust necessary in this negotiation environment.O mercado de energia e a rede elétrica desempenham um papel importante na vida quotidiana da população. Grande parte das áreas da sociedade moderna, como é o caso da comunicação, transportes, saúde, sistema financeiro, entre outras; requer energia elétrica para funcionar corretamente. Tradicionalmente, as redes de energia operam de forma centralizada. Os consumidores estão conectados a fornecedores centralizados na rede e a energia é transferida dos produtores para os consumidores. No entanto, o aumento da popularidade das Fontes de Energia Renováveis (FER), como painéis fotovoltaicos instalados nas residências, pequeno comércio e pequena indústria, difundiu o uso da geração distribuída de energia, que a rede principal de energia não foi projetada para suportar. Uma das possíveis soluções para esse problema é a criação de um Mercado Local de Energia (MLe). Um MLe é um mercado que opera numa pequena área física, como uma vizinhança. Num MLe, os consumidores tradicionais têm a possibilidade de ser participantes ativos no mercado. Isto é possível porque o MLe está estruturado de forma a permitir negociações em pequena escala e trocas de energia entre os participantes, que tradicionalmente seriam apenas consumidores finais. O MLe é capaz de lidar com a geração de energia distribuída proveniente das FER, porque as negociações e a distribuição ocorrem a um nível local, reduzindo assim os problemas com a rede principal. Para além disso, a participação no mercado local pode reduzir os custos de energia ou até gerar lucros para os consumidores, contribuindo ainda para facilitar a gestão da rede e reduzir as perdas técnicas a ela associadas. Este trabalho explora o conceito de MLe e está focado em dois objetivos principais: projetar e desenvolver um sistema que permita a simulação de MLe, bem como um mecanismo que permita negociações confiáveis neste mercado. Para atingir estes objetivos, é proposta uma arquitetura de Sistema Multi-Agente (SMA) para modelar e permitir a simulação do MLe. Para além disso, para apoiar o mercado, também é proposto um modelo de confiança utilizado para avaliar o comportamento dos participantes e detetar falhas ou atividades maliciosas. O SMA desenvolvido modela um MLe com base numa Smart Grid, que é uma rede de energia com um sistema ciber-físico, com sensores inteligentes e mecanismos de comunicação. O SMA foi desenvolvido com agentes para modelar sensores, participantes do mercado e um agente Market Interaction Manager (MIM), responsável pela gestão das negociações e pela aplicação de mecanismos de confiança. O mecanismo de confiança foi projetado para atribuir um valor de confiança dinâmico a cada participante, que é adaptado durante todo o período de negociação. Essa avaliação da confiança do participante é baseada na análise de dados históricos, contextuais, como condições climatéricas, e no uso de métodos de previsão para antever o comportamento esperado do participante, permitindo penalizar aqueles que exibem um comportamento questionável no mercado. Foi realizada uma simulação de caso de estudo, com o objetivo de avaliar o desempenho do mecanismo de confiança proposto e de que forma é que o uso de diferentes métodos de previsão interfere neste desempenho. Os resultados obtidos permitiram concluir que a metodologia de confiança é capaz de atualizar a confiança de cada participante, durante o período de negociação e, quando combinada com um mecanismo de previsão com bom desempenho, é capaz de obter uma avaliação confiável do comportamento dos participantes. Tendo em consideração estes resultados, acreditamos que a metodologia de confiança proposta é capaz de fornecer uma avaliação de confiança valiosa quando usada pelo agente MIM. Esta tese de mestrado é desenvolvida no âmbito de um projeto chamado Secure interactions and trusted Participation in local Electricity Trading (SPET), um projeto de Investigação e Desenvolvimento (I&D) financiado pela FCT-SAICT2017. O projeto SPET tem como objetivo o desenvolvimento de um MAS para a modelação e simulação de MLe, tendo como foco a segurança e confiança necessárias neste ambiente de negociação

Multilateralising Regionalism: Spaghetti Bowls as Building Blocs on the Path to Global Free Trade

This paper addresses the final steps to global free trade -- the political economy forces that might drive them, and the role the WTO might play in guiding them. Two facts form the departure point: 1) Regionalism is here to stay; 2) the motley assortment of regional trade agreements is not the best way to organise world trade. Moving to global duty-free trade will require a multilateralisation of regionalism. The paper presents the political economy logic of trade liberalisation and uses it to structure a narrative of world trade liberalisation since 1947. The logic is then used to project the world tariff map in 2010, arguing that the pattern will be marked by fractals – fuzzy, leaky trade blocs made up of fuzzy, leaky sub-blocs (fuzzy since the proliferation of FTAs makes it impossible to draw sharp lines around the 3 big blocs, and leaky since some FTAs create free trade ’canals’ linking the blocs). The paper then presents a novel political economy mechanism – spaghetti bowls as building blocs – whereby offshoring creates a force that encourages the multilateralisation of regionalism. Finally, the paper suggests three things the WTO could do to help multilateralise regionalism.

Global Imbalances and Imported Disinflation in the Euro Area

We estimate a medium-scale DSGE model for the euro area in an open economy framework. The model includes structural trends on all variables, which allow us to estimate on gross data. We first provide a theoretical balanced growth path consistent with permanent productivity shocks, inflation target changes, and permanent shocks to the openness of the economies. We then define the cycle as the gap between this sustainable trajectory and the gross data, thus our model properly deals with deviations of the trade balance. Finally, we find persistent and strong effects from the asymmetric increase of euro area imports during the last ten years on domestic inflation. From the first quarter of 2000 to the last quarter of 2008, we estimate the contribution of the imbalanced development of international trade on euro area inflation to an average of -0.7%, and on the 3-Month interest rate to an average of -1.4%.Global Imbalances, Disinflation, Business Fluctuations, Open Economy Macroeconomics.

Fleet dimensioning and scheduling in the Brazilian ethanol industry: a fuzzy logic approach

This work solves a real-world multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP) with a homogeneous fleet and capacitated depots. A pipeline company wants to establish a vehicle policy in order to own part of its fleet and serve its customers for a period of one year. The company also wants to know the schedule of the visits for collecting ethanol from 261 producers and taking it to their three terminals located in Brazil. This problem presents uncertain demand, since weather conditions impact the final crop and uncertain depot capacity. Due to the vagueness of managers’ speech, this problem also presents uncertain travel time. In this paper, fuzzy logic is used to model uncertainty and vagueness and to split the initial instance into smaller ones. Besides solving a real-world problem with fuzzy demand, fuzzy depot capacity and fuzzy travel time, this paper contributes with a decision making tool that reports different solutions for different uncertainty levels.Este trabalho resolve um problema de roteamento de veículos multi-depósito do mundo real (MDVRP) com frota homogênea e depósitos capacitados. Uma empresa de pipeline deseja estabelecer uma política de veículos para possuir parte de sua frota e atender seus clientes por um período de um ano. A empresa também quer saber o agendamento das visitas para coleta de etanol de 261 produtores e retirada para seus três terminais localizados no Brasil. Este problema apresenta incertezas de demanda, já que as condições climáticas impactam a safra final e depósito de capacidade incerta. Devido à imprecisão do discurso dos gerentes, este problema também apresenta tempo de viagem incerto. Neste artigo, a lógica fuzzy é usada para modelar a incerteza e vagueza e dividir a instância inicial em outras menores. Além de resolver um problema do mundo real com demanda difusa, capacidade de depósito difusa e tempo de viagens difusas, este artigo contribui com uma ferramenta de tomada de decisão que relata diferentes soluções para diferentes níveis de incerteza

Meta-Analysis of the Business Cycle Correlation between the Euro Area and the CEECs

We review the literature on business cycle correlation between the euro area and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), a topic that has gained attention as the newest EU members approach monetary union. Our meta-analysis of 35 identified publications suggests some CEECs already have comparably high correlation with the euro area business cycle. We find that estimation methodologies can have a significant effect on correlation coefficients. While CEEC central bankers tend to be more conservative in their estimates than academics or eurosystem researchers, we find no evidence of a geographical bias in the studies.monetary union, optimum currency area, business cycles, meta analysis

RESCUING PUBLICNESS FROM ORGANIZATION STUDIES

Does publicness still make sense as an issue for further research? Classic organizational sociology (or standard theory) has provided a breakthrough for understanding public administration and management, but has not fully explored the agenda. Publicness is analytically characterized by the ownership of two production functions: efficiency (outputs), effectiveness (societal outcomes). While similarities may exist between public and non-public entities on some aspects of their organizational models, the effectiveness function they are accountable for is quite specific. Such a perspective allows public administration and organizational scholars to explore new perspectives such as organizing and organized (or the agenda of extended theory).organizational analysis; publicness; organized; organizing; public administration