Finding an optimal strategy of incorporating renewable sources of energy and electricity storing systems in a regional electrical grid

A game with a finite (more than three) number of players on a polyhedron of connected player strategies is studied. This game describes the interaction among (a) the base load power plant (the generator), (b) all the large customers of a regional electrical grid that receive electric energy from the generator, as well as from the available renewable sources of energy, both directly and via electricity storing facilities, and (c) the transmission company. An auxiliary three-person game on polyhedra of disjoint player strategies that is associated with the initial game is also considered. It is shown that an equilibrium point in the auxiliary game is an equilibrium point in the above game with connected player strategies. Verifiable necessary and sufficient conditions of an equilibrium in the auxiliary three-person game are proposed, and these conditions allow one to find equilibria in (the auxiliary) solvable game by solving three linear programming problems two of which form a dual pair

A game-theoretic approach to optimizing the scale of incorporating renewable sources of energy and electricity storing systems in a regional electrical grid

The problem of developing a decision support system for estimating a) the scale of incorporating available renewable sources of energy (such as solar and wind energy) in a part of a country’s electrical grid (called a regional electrical grid further in this paper), and b) the scale of storing electricity in this (regional) electrical grid to make these renewable sources of electric power competitive with traditional power generators (such as fossil-fuel and nuclear ones) and to reduce the cost of acquiring electricity from all the electric power generating facilities in the grid is considered. In the framework of this system, renewable sources of energy are viewed as electricity generating facilities under both existing and expected electricity prices, and the uncertainty of energy supply from them and the uncertainty of the grid customer demand for electricity during every 24 h are taken into account. A mathematical model underlying the system allows one to study the interaction of all the grid elements as a game with a finite (more than three) number of players on a polyhedron of connected player strategies (i.e., strategies that cannot be chosen by the players independently of each other) in a finite-dimensional space. It is shown that solving both parts of the problem under consideration is reducible to finding Nash equilibrium points in this game

Three Quantitative Management Problems in Public Procurement and Decision Procedures for their Analysis and Solving

Three management problems that a state (or a public administration acting on its behalf) faces in procuring goods and/or services are considered: a) choosing the type of a contract to be awarded and the type of a competitive bidding to determine the winning bid, b) setting the initial price for a contract being the subject of the bidding, and c) designing (or choosing) a set of rules for determining the winning bid by means of the chosen competitive bidding. Mathematical models and decision procedures for analyzing and solving these problems are discussed

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Three Proposals to Introduce the Nationwide Popular Vote in U.S. Presidential Elections

The idea of reforming the Electoral College recurs each time a presidential election nears. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of respondents support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of direct popular election of the President. Yet, it is doubtful whether these polls really imply that such a move would be best for the country. Despite the seeming simplicity of direct popular presidential election, its introduction in the United States—a country in which the clear separation of powers between the states and the federal government has existed for more than two centuries—would have hidden drawbacks that the media and pollsters usually fail to communicate. Further, the existing Electoral College-based system of electing a President is complicated, and the simplistic media coverage of American social and political phenomena fails to educate voters about the nuances of that system. Thus, pollsters are asking people whether they favor replacing the Electoral College, a system that many respondents don’t sufficiently understand, with direct popular election, a system that many respondents also don’t necessarily understand

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Three Proposals to Introduce the Nationwide Popular Vote in U.S. Presidential Elections

The idea of reforming the Electoral College recurs each time a presidential election nears. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of respondents support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of direct popular election of the President. Yet, it is doubtful whether these polls really imply that such a move would be best for the country. Despite the seeming simplicity of direct popular presidential election, its introduction in the United States—a country in which the clear separation of powers between the states and the federal government has existed for more than two centuries—would have hidden drawbacks that the media and pollsters usually fail to communicate. Further, the existing Electoral College-based system of electing a President is complicated, and the simplistic media coverage of American social and political phenomena fails to educate voters about the nuances of that system. Thus, pollsters are asking people whether they favor replacing the Electoral College, a system that many respondents don’t sufficiently understand, with direct popular election, a system that many respondents also don’t necessarily understand

Who Will Be the Next President?: A Guide to the U.S. Presidential Election System

Private International Law, International & Foreign Law, Comparative Law; US Politics; Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History; Electoral Politics; Mathematics in the Humanities and Social Science

Who Will Be the Next President? A Guide to the U.S. Presidential Election System

Almost every American has either studied something about the Electoral College in school or at least heard of it. Yet to many people used to electing municipal, state, and federal officials by the democratic principle “the one who gets the most votes always wins,” the Electoral College looks quite mysterious and antiquated. The mystery concerns how such a system could have existed for so long, and why it has not been replaced by a system that is based on the above democratic principle. In contrast, people who are curious about the election system often try to grasp (a) how the Electoral College could have emerged in the first place, and (b) what could have been the Founding Fathers’ logic of designing the system for electing a President and a Vice President. This Chapter considers the Electoral College origins and analyzes a logical mistake made by the originators of the Constitution, which still remains in its text, as well as the election problems that were overlooked by the Founding Fathers in the original design of the Constitutio

Storing Electricity in a Country's Electrical Grid as a Key Energy Problem of the 21st Century

Basic problems of optimizing the structure of a country's electrical grid by incorporating storage facilities and renewable sources of energy into the grid are formulated, and the authors' vision on how to approach some of these problems is offered. A game model for analyzing the potential of an electrical grid with storing facilities to serve its customers and for finding fair (equilibrium) electricity tariffs in it is discussed, and an elementary scheme for estimating advantages of using these fair tariffs by a customer of the grid is proposed. Keywords: derivatives; electrical grid; storing electricity; storing strateg

Single Spatial-Mode Room-Temperature-Operated 3.0 to 3.4 micrometer Diode Lasers

Compact, highly efficient, 3.0 to 3.4 m light emitters are in demand for spectroscopic analysis and identification of chemical substances (including methane and formaldehyde), infrared countermeasures technologies, and development of advanced infrared scene projectors. The need for these light emitters can be currently addressed either by bulky solid-state light emitters with limited power conversion efficiency, or cooled Interband Cascade (IC) semiconductor lasers. Researchers here have developed a breakthrough approach to fabrication of diode mid-IR lasers that have several advantages over IC lasers used for the Mars 2009 mission. This breakthrough is due to a novel design utilizing the strain-engineered quantum-well (QW) active region and quinternary barriers, and due to optimization of device material composition and growth conditions (growth temperatures and rates). However, in their present form, these GaSb-based laser diodes cannot be directly used as a part of sensor systems. The device spectrum is too broad to perform spectroscopic analysis of gas species, and operating currents and voltages are too high. In the current work, the emitters were fabricated as narrow-ridge waveguide index-guided lasers rather than broad stripe-gain guided multimode Fabry-Perot (FP) lasers as was done previously. These narrow-ridge waveguide mid-IR lasers exhibit much lower power consumptions, and can operate in a single spatial mode that is necessary for demonstration of single-mode distributed feedback (DBF) devices for spectroscopic applications. These lasers will enable a new generation of compact, tunable diode laser spectrometers with lower power consumption, reduced complexity, and significantly reduced development costs. These lasers can be used for the detection of HCN, C2H2, methane, and ethane