Risk Management in an Electricity Transmission Project between Iceland and the UK

In recent years, energy is transmitted in the form of electricity in some parts of the world. Furthermore, all member states of the European Union (EU) have a legal obligation to ensure that 20% of their community energy consumption comes from renewable sources by 2020. Therefore, there is a great demand for electricity derived from renewable sources while at the same time there are non-negligible risks in electricity transmission between nations. Addressing these risks is thus of great importance. Under such circumstances, the national power company in Iceland is investigating the possibility of installing a series of 800–1,200 MW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine power cables of over a span of 1,000 km in an effort to deliver more than 5 TWh of renewable electricity to the UK each year. In order to accelerate this project, the company must employ measures of risk prevention and/or mitigation. This study aims at revealing the potential risks of this project (called IceLink) using qualitative analysis. Thus far, there seems to be very few similar studies concerning the project, yet the results are significant from the viewpoint of risk management. Based on the results of interviews and a survey of the literature, we identify three major potential risks of the project: regulatory risk, political risk, and financial risk. In this regard, we classify risk in the same manner as a previous research. Subsequently, we suggest ways to manage these risks and as a result, we find that many of these measures can be introduced even under the present circumstances

Direct computational approach to lattice supersymmetric quantum mechanics

We propose a numerical method of estimating various physical quantities in lattice (supersymmetric) quantum mechanics. The method consists only of deterministic processes such as computing a product of transfer matrix, and has no statistical uncertainties. We use the numerical quadrature to define the transfer matrix as a finite dimensional matrix, and find that it effectively works by rescaling variable for sufficiently small lattice spacings. For a lattice supersymmetric quantum mechanics, the correlators can be estimated without statistical errors, and the effective masses coincide with the exact solution within very small errors less than 0.001%. The SUSY Ward identity is also precisely studied in compared with the Monte-Carlo method. Our method is not limited to a lattice SUSY quantum mechanics, but is also applicable to any other lattice models of quantum mechanics.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, 4 table

Supersymmetric Flaxion

Recently, a new minimal extension of the Standard Model has been proposed, where a spontaneously broken, flavor-dependent global U(1) symmetry is introduced. It not only explains the hierarchical flavor structure in the quark and lepton sector, but also solves the strong CP problem by identifying the Nambu-Goldstone boson as the QCD axion, which we call flaxion. In this work, we consider supersymmetric extensions of the flaxion scenario. We study the CP and flavor violations due to supersymmetric particles, the effects of R-parity violations, the cosmological gravitino and axino problems, and the cosmological evolution of the scalar partner of the flaxion, sflaxion. We also propose an attractor-like inflationary model where the flaxion multiplet contains the inflaton field, and show that a consistent cosmological scenario can be obtained, including inflation, leptogenesis, and dark matter.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures; v2: version published in JHE

Effectiveness of Public Financial Support in an Electricity Transmission Project between Iceland and the UK

The feasibility of the project called IceLink is now being examined, which entails laying 800–1,200 MW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cables over 1,000 km and transmitting over 5 TWh per annum. This project will meet the growing demand in Europe for electricity derived from renewable energy sources, though there exists a relatively high degree of potential risks (e.g., financial risk due to the lingering affect of the financial crisis). This study aims to examine the effectiveness of public financial support for the project by using a quantitative analysis as well as discussing public financial support as a possible measure to fill the viability gap. The simulation results imply that the project is unfeasible unless there is public financial support. In the light of the public nature of the project and its promotion of green power, public financial support may be acceptable. It can thus be said that public financial support will be effective for this project. Also, the sensitivity analysis results show break-even points for three major parameters:—WACC, wholesale power price, and CAPEX—to NPV. Furthermore, the corresponding public financial supports—concessional loans provided by public financial institutions, applying for the feed-in tariff (FiT) system in the UK, and receiving a government subsidy for initial investment—are discussed as potential measures to fill the viability gap. In order to have a feasible project, it is essential to introduce one or more effective measures of public financial support