Analysis of the Iberian Power Futures Market Hedging Efficiency

Capitán Herráiz and Rodríguez Monroy (2009) provide a description of the evolution of the Iberian power futures market managed by OMIP, located in Lisbon (Portugal), during its first two years of existence. That research focus on the assessment of the ex-post forward risk premia (i.e. the difference between the futures prices and the underlying average spot prices for the corresponding delivery period). OMIP forward risk premia are remarkable, specially at the beginning of this market, limiting its price efficiency. The current research enlarges the data set (from the start of that market on July 3, 2006, to February 28, 2011) in order to identify the main drivers behind the growing evolution of OMIP continuous market. An analysis of the evolution of the traded volumes in OMIP versus the auctions for catering the last resort supplies (the so-called “CESUR” auctions, in Spanish “Contratos de Energía para el Suministro de Último Recurso”) and the dominant OTC (“Over The Counter”) market is provided. A regression model using Ordinary Least Square methodology intends to assess the effect of the drivers for a key liquidity measure: the evolution of the open interest related to the open positions cleared and settled by OMIP clearing house (OMIClear). This analysis serves to determine if this market is performing properly according to its original role as key hedging vehicle (hedging efficiency)

Threat Management Methodology for Unmanned Aerial Systems operating in the U-space

This paper presents a threat management methodology for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operating in the civil airspace. The work is framed within an Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system based on the U-space initiative. We propose a new method that focuses on providing the required automated decision-making during real-time threat management and conflict resolution, which is one of the main gaps in the current U-space ecosystem. Our method is capable of handling all commonplace UTM threats, as well as selecting optimal mitigation actions, trading off efficiency and safety. Our implementation is open-source and fully integrated in a UTM software architecture, implementing U-space services related to emergency management and tactical deconfliction. We demonstrate our methodology through a set of realistic use cases with actual UAS operating in civil airspace. For that, we performed field experiments in an aerodrome with segregated airspace, and we showcased that the methodology is capable of autonomously managing heterogeneous threats in real time.Unión Europea - Horizonte 2020 77629

The first renewable forward market mechanisms in the Iberian Electricity Market

A description of the first renewable forward market mechanisms in the Iberian Electricity Market is provided. A contract for difference mechanism is available in Spain since March 2011between the last resort suppliers and the special regime (renewables and cogeneration) settling the price differences between the equilibrium price of the forward regulated auctions for the last resort supply and the spot price of the corresponding delivery period. Regulated auctions of baseload futures of the Portuguese zone in which the Portuguese last resort supplier sells the special regime production exist since December 2011. The experience gained from renewables auctions in Latin America could be used in the Iberian Electricity market, complementing these first market mechanisms. Introduction of renewable auctions at least for the most mature technologies (i.e. wind) in Spain and Portugal providing a fair price for the renewable generation will be of utmost importance in the short term to diminish the tariff deficit caused by the massive deployment of the feed-in-tariff scheme. Liquidity in the forward markets will also increase as a result of the entry of renewable generation companies intending to maximize their profits due to gradual suppression of feed in tariff schemes

Analysis of the Iberian Power Forward Price Formation

The price formation of the Iberian Energy Derivatives Market-the power futures market-starting in July 2006, is assessed until November 2011, through the evolution of the difference between forward and spot prices in the delivery period (“ex-post forward risk premium”) and the comparison with the forward generation costs from natural gas (“clean spark spread”). The premium tends to be positive in all existing mechanisms (futures, Over-the-Counter and auctions for catering part of the last resort supplies). Since year 2011, the values are smaller due to regulatorily recognized prices for coal power plants. The power futures are strongly correlated with European gas prices. The spreads built with prompt contracts tend also to be positive. The biggest ones are for the month contract, followed by the quarter contract and then by the year contract. Therefore, gas fired generation companies can maximize profits trading with contracts of shorter maturity

Analysis of the Iberian electricity forward market hedging efficiency

An assessment of the hedging performance in the Iberian Forward Electricity Market is performed. Aggregated data from the Portuguese and Spanish clearing houses for energy derivatives are considered. The hedging performance is measured through the ratio of the final open interest of a month derivatives contract divided by its accumulated cleared volume. The base load futures in the Iberian energy derivatives exchange show the lowest ratios due to good liquidity. The peak futures show bigger ratios as their reduced liquidity is produced by auctions fixed by Portuguese regulation. The base load swaps settled in the clearing house located in Spain show initially large values due to low registered volumes, as this clearing house is mainly used for short maturity (daily and weekly swaps). This hedging ratio can be a powerful oversight tool for energy regulators when accessing to all the derivatives transactions as envisaged by European regulation

Evaluation of the trading development in the Iberian Energy Derivatives Market

The efficiency of the Iberian Energy Derivatives Market in its first five and a half years is assessed in terms of volume, open interest and price. The continuous market shows steady liquidity growth. Its volume is strongly correlated to that of the Over The Counter (OTC) market, the amount of market makers, the enrolment of financial agents and generation companies belonging to the integrated group of last resort suppliers, and the OTC cleared volume in its clearing house. The hedging efficiency, measured through the ratio between the final open interest and the cleared volume, shows the lowest values for the Spanish base load futures as they are the most liquid contracts. The ex-post forward risk premium has diminished due to the learning curve and the effect of the fixed price retributing the indigenous coal fired generation. This market is quite less developed than the European leaders headquartered in Norway and Germany. Enrolment of more traders, mainly international energy companies, financial agents, energy intensive industries and renewable generation companies is desired. Market monitoring reports by the market operator providing post-trade transparency, OTC data access by the energy regulator, and assessment of the regulatory risk can contribute to efficiency gains

Sistema de control heurístico basado en sistemas multi-agentes aplicado a micro-red eléctrica

Dentro de la transición que se está produciendo en los últimos años del sistema eléctrico de un sistema centralizado a un sistema descentralizado, la micro-red se presenta como unidad energética para solucionar la integración de sistemas de generación distribuidos en el sistema eléctrico actual. “Sistema de control heurístico basado en sistemas multi-agentes aplicado a micro-red” resuelve con un método de control esta integración en la red eléctrica teniendo en consideración tanto recursos energéticos fotovoltaicos, como sistemas de almacenamiento y sistemas de estabilización de potencia reactiva (STATCOM). Aparte de realizar un reparto y equilibrio de potencias tanto activa como reactiva, se prioriza el uso de fuentes energéticas limpias y se minimiza el uso de la potencia de la red principal dotando a la micro-red de una mayor autonomía.Recently, the electrical system is inmerse in a transition from a centralized to a decentralized system. The micro-grid appears as a potential energy unit for solving the problem of the distributed energy resources integration into the current electric system. “Heuristic control system based on multi-agent systems applied to a micro-grid” figures out with a control method this integration into the main electrical grid taking into consideration both photovoltaic energy resources and storage/stabilization systems. An active and reactive power flow balance is done. Moreover, it is priorized the use of clean energies (such as photovoltaics and storage systems) and it is minimized the use of the power coming from the main grid providing to the micro-grid a higher autonomy.Universidad de Sevilla. Máster en Sistemas de Energía Eléctric

La realidad virtual como medio de comunicación de arquitectura

[ES] Es un estudio de las posibilidades de la realidad virtual como herramienta en la comunicación de arquitectura.[EN] It is a study of the possibilities of virtual reality as a tool in architectural communication.Terry Capitán, C. (2019). La realidad virtual como medio de comunicación de arquitectura. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/13423

From Perception to Navigation in Environments with Persons: An Indoor Evaluation of the State of the Art

Research in the field of social robotics is allowing service robots to operate in environments with people. In the aim of realizing the vision of humans and robots coexisting in the same environment, several solutions have been proposed to (1) perceive persons and objects in the immediate environment; (2) predict the movements of humans; as well as (3) plan the navigation in agreement with socially accepted rules. In this work, we discuss the different aspects related to social navigation in the context of our experience in an indoor environment. We describe state-of-the-art approaches and experiment with existing methods to analyze their performance in practice. From this study, we gather first-hand insights into the limitations of current solutions and identify possible research directions to address the open challenges. In particular, this paper focuses on topics related to perception at the hardware and application levels, including 2D and 3D sensors, geometric and mainly semantic mapping, the prediction of people trajectories (physics-, pattern- and planning-based), and social navigation (reactive and predictive) in indoor environments

Evolutionary 3D Image Segmentation of Curve Epithelial Tissues of Drosophila melanogaster

Analysing biological images coming from the microscope is challenging; not only is it complex to acquire the images, but also the three-dimensional shapes found on them. Thus, using automatic approaches that could learn and embrace that variance would be highly interesting for the field. Here, we use an evolutionary algorithm to obtain the 3D cell shape of curve epithelial tissues. Our approach is based on the application of a 3D segmentation algorithm called LimeSeg, which is a segmentation software that uses a particle-based active contour method. This program needs the fine tuning of some hyperparameters that could present a long number of combinations, with the selection of the best parametrisation being highly time-consuming. Our evolutionary algorithm automatically selects the best possible parametrisation with which it can perform an accurate and non-supervised segmentation of 3D curved epithelial tissues. This way, we combine the segmentation potential of LimeSeg and optimise the parameters selection by adding automatisation. This methodology has been applied to three datasets of confocal images from Drosophila melanogaster, where a good convergence has been observed in the evaluation of the solutions. Our experimental results confirm the proper performing of the algorithm, whose segmented images have been compared to those manually obtained for the same tissues.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades TIN2017-88209-C2Junta de Andalucía US-1263341Junta de Andalucía P18-RT-2778Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad BFU2016-74975-PMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2019-103900GB-10