A review of potential barriers to the participation of electric vehicles in German balancing markets

As conventional flexibility providers are gradually being replaced by variable renewable energies and electricity demand keeps rising, additional flexibility will become increasingly valuable for the power system. Meanwhile, new sources of flexibility known as distributed energy resources are starting to emerge. Among them electric vehicles have a promising potential to provide short-term frequency-control services. However their integration into balancing markets faces various barriers. Based on the existing literature, this paper aims at identifying which potential barriers exist in the case of the participation of electric vehicles in German balancing markets

Information Gathering and Marketing

Consumers have only partial knowledge before making a purchase decision, but can choose to acquire more detailed information. A Örm can make it easier or harder for these consumers to obtain such information. We explore consumersíinformation gathering and the Örmís integrated strategy for marketing, pricing, and investment in quality. In particular, we highlight that when consumers are ex-ante heterogeneous, the Örm might choose an intermediate marketing strategy for two quite di§erent reasons. First, it serves as a non-price means of discriminationó it can make information only partially available, in a way that induces some, but not all, consumers to acquire the information. Second, when the Örm cannot commit to a given investment in quality, it can still convince all consumers of its provision by designing a pricing and marketing policy that induces some consumers to actively gather further information. This mass of consumers, in exchange, is su¢ ciently large to discipline the monopolist to invest in the quality of the product

More on massive gravitino scattering amplitudes and the unitarity cutoff of the new Fayet-Iliopoulos terms

We extend the $2\rightarrow2$ gravitino scattering amplitude computed in [1] to an arbitrary $\mathcal{N}=1$ supergravity model of one chiral and one vector multiplet, in a Minkowski background with supersymmetry breaking driven by both $F$- and $D$-terms. We find that the cancellation of the leading term in $\mathcal{O}(\kappa^2 E^4/|m_{3/2}|^2)$, that would lead to a breakdown of perturbative unitarity at a scale $\Lambda\sim M_\mathrm{SUSY}$, is a consequence of the vanishing of the scalar potential at its minimum, which is implied by the flat background. We then analyse the inclusion of the new Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) terms. We find that, since they modify the scalar potential without contributing to the amplitudes, they generically lead to uncanceled leading terms in the latter and a perturbative cutoff at the supersymmetry breaking scale, except for particular cases where the new FI term does not modify the potential at its minimum and the cutoff is pushed up to the Planck scale.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

Flandrian, a formation or just a name?

The name Flandrian is now used to indicate deposits of the FIandrian transgression or of the Holocene is a whole, particular in Anglo-Saxon literature. As most geological connotations, Flandrian has changed significance and chronostratigraphic age since it was created in 1885 by RUTOT and VAN DEN BROECX. At that time, Flandrian was a pleistocene "assise" which occurred at the end of long series of quaternary and tertiary stages. Therefore, it completed and still completes the geological traditions of the cenozoic sequence. Substages the Flandrian, as Calais and Dunkerque, are generally used, although there only exist type areas of both series instead of type localities. 'Work is going to define the type section in both areas of the Flemish Coastal Plain. It would be useful to re-establish the Flandrian stage on basis of these new investigations, as the last chronostratigraphic member of a continuous series in the cenozoic stratigraphical sequence

The real exchange rate, innovation and productivity

We evaluate manufacturing firms' responses to changes in the real exchange rate (RER) using detailed firm-level data for a large set of countries for the period 2001-2010. We uncover the following stylized facts: In emerging Asia, real depreciations are associated with faster growth of firm-level TFP, sales and cashow, higher probabilities to engage in R&D and export. We find no significant effects for firms from industrialized economies and negative effects for firms in other emerging economies, which are less export-intensive and more import-intensive. Motivated by these facts, we build a dynamic model in which real depreciations raise the cost of importing intermediates, but increase demand and the profitability to engage in exports and R&D, thereby relaxing borrowing constraints and enabling more firms to overcome the fixed-cost hurdle for financing R&D. We decompose the effects of RER changes on productivity growth into these channels and explain regional heterogeneity in the effects of RER changes in terms of differences in export intensity, import intensity and financial constraints. We estimate the model and quantitatively evaluate the different mechanisms by providing counterfactual simulations of temporary real exchange rate movements. Effects on physical TFP growth, while different across regions, are non-linear and asymmetric