The Spanish Electricity Industry: Plus ça change …

In this paper we describe the Spanish electricity industry and its current regulatory regime. Special emphasis is given to the description and discussion of market design issues (including stranded cost recovery), the evolution of market structure, investment in generation capacity and network activities. We also provide a critical assessment of the 1997 regulatory reform, which did not succeed in introducing effective competition, but retained an opaque regulation which has been subject to continuous governmental interventionism. Furthermore, the implementation of the Kyoto agreement could show the lack of robustness of the regulatory regime.Spain, electricity, market design, generation, network activities, regulation

Storing Power: Market Structure Matters

We asses how firms' incentives to operate and invest in energy storage depend on the market structure. For this purpose, we characterize equilibrium market outcomes allowing for market power in storage and/or production, as well as for vertical integration between storage and production. Market power reduces overall efficiency through two channels: it induces an inefficient use of the storage facilities, and it distorts investment incentives. The worst outcome for consumers and total welfare occurs under vertical integration. We illustrate our theoretical results by simulating the Spanish wholesale electricity market for different levels of storage capacity. The results are key to understand how to regulate energy storage, an issue which is critical for the deployment of renewables

A Primer on Capacity Mechanisms

A simple model is built up to capture the key drivers of investment and pricing incentives in electricity markets. The focus is put on the interaction between market power and investment incentives, and the trade-o_ it introduces when designing the optimal regulatory instruments. In contrast to the energy-only market paradigm that assumes perfect competition, our model demonstrates that in the presence of market power scarcity prices do not promote efficient investments, even among risk-neutral investors. Combining price caps and capacity payments allows to disentangle the two-fold objective of inducing the right investment incentives while mitigating market power. Bundling capacity payments with financial obligations further mitigates market power as long as strike prices are set sufficiently close to marginal costs

Market Power and Price Exposure: Learning from Changes in Renewables Regulation

In many regulatory settings, regulators often debate whether to pay producers at fixed prices or at market-based prices. In this paper, we assess how firms' price exposure affects the degree of market power. We find that fixed prices mitigate market power by directly affecting the dominant firms' incentives to exert market power, while market-based prices do so indirectly by promoting the fringe firms' incentives to engage in arbitrage. To empirically identify these effects, we exploit a natural experiment that took place in the Spanish electricity market, where the regulator switched back and forth from paying renewable energies according to fixed or to market-based prices. Overall, we find that fixed prices were relatively more effective in weakening firms' market power, even though the market-based price regime led to more active price arbitrage

A cloud-based parallel system for locating customers in indoor malls

Advances in techniques of locating mobile users have promoted the development of marketing campaigns based on customers’ location. WiFi-based location methods have proven their usefulness in tracking and locating customers within a indoor mall. Nevertheless, in some cases the performance of these methods prevents them from being used in real scenarios. In this paper, we have faced the problem of improving the execution time and reducing the cost of one of these WiFi-based location methods. Parallel programming techniques, service-oriented technologies and the cloud computing paradigm have been combined to solve efficiently these problems. The resulting system has been deployed in the Amazon EC2 environment, evaluating different configuration and deployment options

Experiencia de intercambio de conocimiento : Laguna Mar Chiquita (Córdoba): testigo del cambio hidroclimático de Sudamérica

Desde hace más de 15 años, grupos de investigación de la UNC/CONICET en colaboración con otras universidades del país y del exterior desarrollan investigaciones sobre la variabilidad ambiental presente y pasada y el poblamiento humano en el área de la laguna Mar Chiquita (LMC) en un marco de estrecha colaboración con el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de la Región Ansenuza “Anibal Montes” de la localidad de Miramar (Córdoba, MCNAM).Facultad de Informátic

Experiencia de intercambio de conocimiento : Laguna Mar Chiquita (Córdoba): testigo del cambio hidroclimático de Sudamérica

Desde hace más de 15 años, grupos de investigación de la UNC/CONICET en colaboración con otras universidades del país y del exterior desarrollan investigaciones sobre la variabilidad ambiental presente y pasada y el poblamiento humano en el área de la laguna Mar Chiquita (LMC) en un marco de estrecha colaboración con el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de la Región Ansenuza “Anibal Montes” de la localidad de Miramar (Córdoba, MCNAM).Facultad de Informátic

Experiencia de intercambio de conocimiento : Laguna Mar Chiquita (Córdoba): testigo del cambio hidroclimático de Sudamérica

Desde hace más de 15 años, grupos de investigación de la UNC/CONICET en colaboración con otras universidades del país y del exterior desarrollan investigaciones sobre la variabilidad ambiental presente y pasada y el poblamiento humano en el área de la laguna Mar Chiquita (LMC) en un marco de estrecha colaboración con el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de la Región Ansenuza “Anibal Montes” de la localidad de Miramar (Córdoba, MCNAM).Facultad de Informátic

GNSS transpolar earth reflectometry exploriNg system (G-TERN): Mission concept

The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) Transpolar Earth Reflectometry exploriNg system (G-TERN) was proposed in response to ESA's Earth Explorer 9 revised call by a team of 33 multi-disciplinary scientists. The primary objective of the mission is to quantify at high spatio-temporal resolution crucial characteristics, processes and interactions between sea ice, and other Earth system components in order to advance the understanding and prediction of climate change and its impacts on the environment and society. The objective is articulated through three key questions. 1) In a rapidly changing Arctic regime and under the resilient Antarctic sea ice trend, how will highly dynamic forcings and couplings between the various components of the ocean, atmosphere, and cryosphere modify or influence the processes governing the characteristics of the sea ice cover (ice production, growth, deformation, and melt)? 2) What are the impacts of extreme events and feedback mechanisms on sea ice evolution? 3) What are the effects of the cryosphere behaviors, either rapidly changing or resiliently stable, on the global oceanic and atmospheric circulation and mid-latitude extreme events? To contribute answering these questions, G-TERN will measure key parameters of the sea ice, the oceans, and the atmosphere with frequent and dense coverage over polar areas, becoming a "dynamic mapper" of the ice conditions, the ice production, and the loss in multiple time and space scales, and surrounding environment. Over polar areas, the G-TERN will measure sea ice surface elevation (<10 cm precision), roughness, and polarimetry aspects at 30-km resolution and 3-days full coverage. G-TERN will implement the interferometric GNSS reflectometry concept, from a single satellite in near-polar orbit with capability for 12 simultaneous observations. Unlike currently orbiting GNSS reflectometry missions, the G-TERN uses the full GNSS available bandwidth to improve its ranging measurements. The lifetime would be 2025-2030 or optimally 2025-2035, covering key stages of the transition toward a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. This paper describes the mission objectives, it reviews its measurement techniques, summarizes the suggested implementation, and finally, it estimates the expected performance