Competitive Benchmarking: An IS Research Approach to Address Wicked Problems with Big Data and Analytics

Wicked problems like sustainable energy and financial market stability are societal challenges that arise from complex socio-technical systems in which numerous social, economic, political, and technical factors interact. Understanding and mitigating them requires research methods that scale beyond the traditional areas of inquiry of Information Systems (IS) “individuals, organizations, and markets” and that deliver solutions in addition to insights. We describe an approach to address these challenges through Competitive Benchmarking (CB), a novel research method that helps interdisciplinary research communities to tackle complex challenges of societal scale by using different types of data from a variety of sources such as usage data from customers, production patterns from producers, public policy and regulatory constraints, etc. for a given instantiation. Further, the CB platform generates data that can be used to improve operational strategies and judge the effectiveness of regulatory regimes and policies. We describe our experience applying CB to the sustainable energy challenge in the Power Trading Agent Competition (Power TAC) in which more than a dozen research groups from around the world jointly devise, benchmark, and improve IS-based solutions

Electric Vehicle Virtual Power Plant Dilemma: Grid Balancing Versus Customer Mobility

Virtual power plants (VPP) play a crucial role in balancing the electricity smart grid. VPPs aggregate energy from decentralized sources, for example, biogas, solar panels, or hydropower, to generate and consume electricity on demand. We study the management of electric vehicle (EV) fleets organized in VPPs as a way to address the challenges posed by the inflexible energy supply of renewable sources. In particular, we analyze the potential of parked EVs to absorb electricity from the grid, and provide electricity back to the grid when needed. A fleet owner can either charge, discharge for renting, discharge to the grid, or keep an EV idle. A unique property of our mixed rental-trading strategy is that decisions are made between making an EV available for rental, where the location within the city matters (drivers want a car to be close to their place of departure or arrival) and for discharging it to the grid, where location does not matter (vehicles can discharge to the grid from any capable charging point). We study the feasibility of VPPs for a fleet of 1500 real EVs on the Nord Pool Spot, a North European electricity spot market. A Fourier series approach captures the demand patterns of carsharing vehicles accurately, especially when our weighted objective function with asymmetric payoffs is applied. We show that the VPP can be profitable to fleet owners, ecologically advantageous through reductions in wind power curtailment, and beneficial to consumers by reducing energy expenses

Towards functional-structural modelling of greenhouse cucumber

At present, much effort is put into increasing the efficiency of cultivation systems for greenhouse vegetables. There are many options to manage plant growth factors in a greenhouse. For example, supplemental light can be given, even directed at specific plant parts. Functional-structural modelling is expected to help exploring different cultivation and plant manipulation regimes in order to optimize production over a prolonged period of time or in a period of high market prices. To introduce structural modelling for greenhouse cucumber, an experiment is described that showed differences in yield due to different plant densities and plant distributions. As a first step towards virtual cucumber plants, a static structural model of cucumber was conceptualized to picture differences in the potential of the stands to intercept direct light with an orientation perpendicular to the ground, measured by the projected leaf area per unit ground area, the so-called light interception efficiency (m2 m-2). The formalism of parametric L-systems was used to describe a dynamic structural model of cucumber with focus on realistic plant geometry. At present sophisticated functional-structural models of greenhouse cucumber or other vegetables do not exist, but they are highly desirable and under construction