WHO PAYS FOR RENEWABLES? THE EFFECT OF DATACENTRES ON RENEWABLE SUBSIDIES. ESRI Research Bulletin 2019/11

Ireland faces several targets for renewable energy usage, across the heating, transport and electricity sectors. These targets are set as a proportion of total energy usage. In the case of electricity, 40% of electricity must be generated from renewable sources by 2020. To meet this target, renewable electricity generation is subsidised through the Public Service Obligation levy, which appears on all consumers’ bills. The PSO is levied on residential consumers, commercial consumers and large industrial consumers according to their contribution to peak demand – the more the sector contributes to peak demand, the higher the portion of PSO that they pay

Genome-wide transcriptomics analysis identifies sox7 and sox18 as specifically regulated by gata4 in cardiomyogenesis

This work was supported by British Heart Foundation (BHF Project Grant no PG/13/23/30080 to B.A.A and S.H.), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M001695/1 to S.H.) and the University of Aberdeen (for A.T.L). Acknowledgements We’re grateful to Ms Yvonne Turnbull and Ms Kate Watt for technical assistance and lab management. We would like to thank Professor Cedric Blanpain and Dr Xionghui Li from Université Libre de Bruxelles for providing training of ES cell manipulation and Mesp1/Gata4 cell lines. We are grateful to Professor Todd Evans from Weill Cornell Medical College for generously providing iGata ES cell lines. We also would like to thank Professor Aaron Zorn and Scott Rankin for providing Xsox18 plasmid.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Submicrosecond comparisons of time standards via the Navigation Technology Satellites (NTS)

An interim demonstration was performed of the time transfer capability of the NAVSTAR GPS system using a single NTS satellite. Measurements of time difference (pseudo-range) are made from the NTS tracking network and at the participating observatories. The NTS network measurements are used to compute the NTS orbit trajectory. The central NTS tracking station has a time link to the Naval Observatory UTC (USNO,MC1) master clock. Measurements are used with the NTS receiver at the remote observatory, the time transfer value UTC (USNO,MC1)-UTC (REMOTE, VIA NTS) is calculated. Intercomparisons were computed using predicted values of satellite clock offset and ephemeus

Investment vs. refurbishment: incentivising the correct quantity and quality of electricity generators. ESRI Research Bulletin 2016/2/1

Electricity markets are increasingly moving from a design wherein firms are compensated solely for the energy they provide (‘energy only’ markets) to one where firms are also compensated separately for other costs incurred. One example of a separate payment intended to compensate a firm for other costs incurred is a capacity remuneration mechanism (CRM). CRMs are designed to compensate firms for their fixed costs of capacity, or the cost of building the power plant. In this way, CRMs help to ensure that sufficient electricity generation capacity exists to provide sufficient generation during peak demand hours, ensuring reliable supply

A Menu Approach to Revealing Generator Reliability Using a Stochastic Bilevel Mathematical Program. ESRI WP518. November 2015

Liberalised electricity markets often include a capacity remuneration mechanism to allow generation firms recover their fixed costs. Various de-rating factors and/or penalties have been incorporated into such mechanisms in order to award the unit based on the contribution they make to system security, which in turn depends on the unit's reliability. However, this reliability is known to the firm but not to the regulator. We propose an adaptation of menu regulation to design capacity payments based on a declaration by the firm of their reliability. We scale payments and penalties according to this declared reliability such that the firm's profit-maximising strategy is to truthfully reveal their reliability. We apply the methodology to an illustrative test system. Truth-telling is induced, increasing the efficiency of capacity payments while eliminating the requirement for the regulator to allocate resources to discovering reliability

Investment vs. Refurbishment: Examining Capacity Payment Mechanisms Using Mixed Complementarity Problems With Endogenous Probability. ESRI WP507. July 2015

Capacity remuneration mechanisms exist in many electricity markets. Capacity mechanism designs do not explicitly consider the effects of refurbishment of existing generation units in order to increase their reliability. This paper presents a mixed complementarity problem with endogenous probabilities to examine the impact of refurbishment on electricity prices and generation investment. Capacity payments are found to increase reliability when refurbishment is not possible, while capacity payments and reliability options yield similar results when refurbishment is possible. Final costs to consumers are similar under the two mechanisms with the exception of the initial case of overcapacity

Bulk photonic metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion

In this work, we demonstrate a self-standing bulk three-dimensional metamaterial based on the network of silver nanowires in an alumina membrane. This constitutes an anisotropic effective medium with hyperbolic dispersion, which can be used in sub-diffraction imaging or optical cloaks. Highly anisotropic dielectric constants of the material range from positive to negative, and the transmitted laser beam shifts both toward the normal to the surface, as in regular dielectrics, and off the normal, as in anisotropic dielectrics with the refraction index smaller than one. The designed photonic metamaterial is the thickest reported in the literature, both in terms of its physical size 1cm x 1cm x 51 mm, and the number of vacuum wavelengths, N=61 at l=0.84 mm.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figur

The S2 VLBI Correlator: A Correlator for Space VLBI and Geodetic Signal Processing

We describe the design of a correlator system for ground and space-based VLBI. The correlator contains unique signal processing functions: flexible LO frequency switching for bandwidth synthesis; 1 ms dump intervals, multi-rate digital signal-processing techniques to allow correlation of signals at different sample rates; and a digital filter for very high resolution cross-power spectra. It also includes autocorrelation, tone extraction, pulsar gating, signal-statistics accumulation.Comment: 44 pages, 13 figure