Optical Emission Spectroscopy and Electrical Study of High Power Thermal Arc Plasma Switching Device

In this work, an atmospheric thermal plasma arc generated from a laboratory scale high power arc switching device was investigated. In the presented study the typical voltage and current profiles from the arc switching device were measured by a high voltage probe and a Rogowski coil. It was shown that the volt-ampere characteristic of the arc plasma is directly related to the distance between electrodes. This switching device has a pulse width range of approximately 120 ns. Furthermore, the optical emis-sion spectroscopy techniques were used to measurement of the arc temperature and to identify the plasma active species. The calculated arc temperature is about 14000 K

Impact of Demand-Response on the Efficiency and Prices in Real-Time Electricity Markets

International audienceWe study the effect of Demand-Response (DR) in dynamic real-time electricity markets. We use a two-stage market model that takes into account the dynamical aspects of gen-eration, demand, and DR. We study the real-time market prices in two scenarios: in the former, consumers anticipate or delay their flexible loads in reaction to market prices; in the latter, the flexible loads are controlled by an independent aggregator. For both scenarios, we show that, when users are price-takers, any competitive equilibrium is efficient: the players' selfish responses to prices coincide with a socially optimal policy. Moreover, the price process is the same in all scenarios. For the numerical evaluation of the properties of the equilibrium, we develop a solution technique based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) and trajectorial forecasts. The forecasts are computed us-ing wind generation data from the UK. We challenge the assumption that all players have full information. If the as-sumption is verified, then, as expected, the social welfare increases with the amount of DR available, since DR relaxes the ramping constraints of generation. However, if the day-ahead market cannot observe how elastic loads are affected by DR, a large quantity of DR can be detrimental and leads to a decrease in the welfare. Furthermore, the DR operator has an incentive to under-dimension the quantity of avail-able DR. Finally, we compare DR with an actual energy storage system. We find that storage has a faster response-time and thus performs better when only a limited amount is installed. However, storage suffers from charge-discharge in-efficiency: with DR, prices do concentrate on marginal cost (for storage, they do not) and provide a better welfare

On the presence of humpback whales in the Persian Gulf: rare or rarely documented? Report of the IWC Scientific Committee Meeting SC/67A/CMP/14, Bled, Slovenia, May 2017

We critically review the evidence for humpback whale presence in the Persian Gulf. Five specimen records, assumed to belong to the endangered Arabian Sea population, are confirmed in the period 1883- 2017: Bassore Bay, Iraq; Doha, Qatar; Kuwait Inner harbour, Kuwait; Qeshm Island, Iran; and Akhtar, Bushehr Province, Iran. The two Iranian cases, both juveniles, are newly recorded. With accumulating reports, an alternate hypothesis to 'rare stragglers' deserves consideration, one in which Arabian Sea humpback whales may enter the Persian Gulf with some regularity, perhaps as normal visitors, if not permanent residents. Deficiency of records may reflect a general sparsity of whale research effort in the Persian Gulf. The historical description of Megaptera indica Gervais, 1883 is translated from French

Power demand control scenarios for smart grid applications with finite number of appliances

In this paper we propose novel and more realistic analytical models for the determination of the peak demand under four power demand control scenarios. Each scenario considers a finite number of appliances installed in a residential area, with diverse power demands and different arrival rates of power requests. We develop recursive formulas for the efficient calculation of the peak demand under each scenario, which take into account the finite population of the appliances. Moreover, we associate each scenario with a proper real-time pricing process in order to derive the social welfare. The proposed analysis is validated through simulations. Moreover, the performance evaluation of the proposed formulas reveals that the absence of the assumption of finite number of appliances could lead to serious peak-demand over-estimations.Grant numbers : This work has been funded by the project of the Catalan Government 2014-SGR-1551