Power Load Management as a Computational Market

Power load management enables energy utilities to reduce peak loads and thereby save money. Due to the large number of different loads, power load management is a complicated optimization problem. We present a new decentralized approach to this problem by modeling direct load management as a computational market. Our simulation results demonstrate that our approach is very efficient with a superlinear rate of convergence to equilibrium and an excellent scalability, requiring few iterations even when the number of agents is in the order of one thousand. Aframework for analysis of this and similar problems is given which shows how nonlinear optimization and numerical mathematics can be exploited to characterize, compare, and tailor problem-solving strategies in market-oriented programming

A Design Perspective on Networked Business Models: A Study of Distributed Generation in the Power Industry Sector

Value chain deconstruction and reconfiguration into new value constellations is a phenomenon impacting many industry sectors. An important strategic issue therefore is the creation and analysis of new networked business models that cut across a variety of enterprise and market actors. In this paper we take up this issue from a design perspective, and consider the construction of networked business models for the emerging case of distributed power generation in the utility industry. We elucidate the role of regulation here: feasibility of new business models in this industry sector appears to be critically dependent on the nature of future regulations even in a so-called ‘deregulated’ open competitive market. We discuss how our value network modelling approach provides benefits already in a non-quantitative analysis in that (1) it offers a capability to map out new business ideas graphically in a clear and communicable fashion, (2) it clarifies the position of the individual stakeholders in innovative value constellations, and (3) it gives some qualitative directions where critical points and possible opportunities for new business models are to be expected

Matching Complex Consumer Needs with e-Service Bundles

e-Services are commercial services that can be ordered and provisioned via the Internet, satisfying a consumer need. Sometimes, such services are provisioned by a constellation of enterprises, and consist of multiple elementary services. A problem is then how to configure such a constellation, satisfying a complex consumer need. To this end, we extend the notion of consumer need in the e3value methodology, as originally intended for designing value constellations. We also show how needs can be (automatically) matched with services provisioned by suppliers. As such, our contribution can be seen as a first step towards on-demand dynamic value constellations, provisioning e-services

Music Rights Clearance Business Analysis and Delivery

Semantic Web Services can be seen as remote Problem Solving Methods offered via the Web through platform and language independent interfaces. They can be seamlessly integrated to achieve more complex functionality by composing pre-existing software components. Despite technical advantages surrounding Semantic Web Services technologies, their perspective overlooks the commercial aspects of services in the real – non-IT – world, and is therefore incomplete and limiting. Real-world services – business activities such as insurances, medical services, ADSL etc – have nowadays an increasing social and economic importance. Important trends are the bundling of services and a growing customer-need orientation. Thus, there is a need for a computational background for describing real-world services and applying knowledge-based technologies for reasoning about them: configuring composite services and analysing them from a business perspective. We have developed ontologies and software tools to fill this gap, and applied them to industrial case studies. We present here a case study from the music industry, going from the analysis of a new business scenario to the development of an application called Xena that coordinates IT infrastructures in order to provide a profitable service that reflects major business principles. As opposed to currently proposed solutions in the Semantic Web Services community, our system is an automated implementation of a real-world service where important business decisions can be traced back

Survival Probability of a Doorway State in regular and chaotic environments

We calculate survival probability of a special state which couples randomly to a regular or chaotic environment. The environment is modelled by a suitably chosen random matrix ensemble. The exact results exhibit non--perturbative features as revival of probability and non--ergodicity. The role of background complexity and of coupling complexity is discussed as well.Comment: 19 pages 5 Figure

"Level Curvature" Distribution for Diffusive Aharonov-Bohm Systems: analytical results

We calculate analytically the distributions of "level curvatures" (LC) (the second derivatives of eigenvalues with respect to a magnetic flux) for a particle moving in a white-noise random potential. We find that the Zakrzewski-Delande conjecture is still valid even if the lowest weak localization corrections are taken into account. The ratio of mean level curvature modulus to mean dissipative conductance is proved to be universal and equal to $2\pi$ in agreement with available numerical data.Comment: 12 pages. Submitted to Phys.Rev.