Essays in Energy Economics and Policy

The world is currently going through an ‘Energy Transition’ and it is changing how our economies, culture and society operate. The research presented in this thesis emanates from large scale changes and is investigated through three distinct research papers, with separate but interlinked themes. Research paper 1 (Chapter 2) profiles households that have adopted of micro renewable energy systems (micro-RES) and examines whether micro-RES installations have impacted energy consumption based on data from the Irish Household Budget Survey. Our findings indicate that some revision of energy policy is needed, as the presence of micro-RES doesn’t affect total energy usage. Research paper 2 (Chapter 3) investigates how the success of solar PV has given rise to a positive feedback cycle in the residential electricity market, whereby increased customer adoption results in reduced demand from utility providers. This leads to price increases and further incentivises customers to adopt solar PV. Empirical findings indicate strong support for the idea of a positive feedback cycle using data from the UK, Australian and Irish Markets. This reinforces the need for stakeholders to consider this issue in framing future energy policies to ensure that the adoption of solar PV is supported in a sustainable way, while not punishing non-adopters with higher electricity rates. Research paper 3 (Chapter 4) employs a new multidimensional measurement to gauge the extent of fuel poverty in the USA. For the three coldest regions in the USA, we find that 12% (New England), 13% (East North Central) & 9% (West North Central) of households are fuel poor. Empirical findings show that the odds of being fuel poor are higher for households with elderly people and children present. These results have useful implications for policy formation and targeting appropriate supports to address this issue

SecuCode: Intrinsic PUF Entangled Secure Wireless Code Dissemination for Computational RFID Devices

The simplicity of deployment and perpetual operation of energy harvesting devices provides a compelling proposition for a new class of edge devices for the Internet of Things. In particular, Computational Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID) devices are an emerging class of battery-free, computational, sensing enhanced devices that harvest all of their energy for operation. Despite wireless connectivity and powering, secure wireless firmware updates remains an open challenge for CRFID devices due to: intermittent powering, limited computational capabilities, and the absence of a supervisory operating system. We present, for the first time, a secure wireless code dissemination (SecuCode) mechanism for CRFIDs by entangling a device intrinsic hardware security primitive Static Random Access Memory Physical Unclonable Function (SRAM PUF) to a firmware update protocol. The design of SecuCode: i) overcomes the resource-constrained and intermittently powered nature of the CRFID devices; ii) is fully compatible with existing communication protocols employed by CRFID devices in particular, ISO-18000-6C protocol; and ii) is built upon a standard and industry compliant firmware compilation and update method realized by extending a recent framework for firmware updates provided by Texas Instruments. We build an end-to-end SecuCode implementation and conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate standards compliance, evaluate performance and security.Comment: Accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computin

The Positive Feedback Cycle in the Electricity Market: Residential Solar PV Adoption, Electricity Demand and Prices.

Residential solar PV Positive feedback cycle Panel data analysis 1. Introduction Micro renewable energy systems are small scale energy systems which generate small amounts of energy when compared to traditional centralized power plants. Micro renewable energy systems have now made it possible for home owners to retrofit their premises to generate their own electricity and/or heat, thus becoming more self-sufficient. Allen et al. (2008) references a study where it was predicted that electrical micro renewable energy systems could provide 30–40% of the United Kingdoms’ electricity needs by 2050. Governments worldwide have included strategies to stimulate the growth of micro renewable energy systems at the residential level as part of their overall energy policy aimed at combatting climate change. Governments have used a variety of support mechanisms to achieve their targets which include Feed-in Tariffs (Fit), point of sales rebates including Renewable Energy Certificates (REC), and tax benefits. These policies have been successful in increasing the number installations particularly that of solar photovoltaic systems in the residential sector in countries like the United States of America, Australia and the United Kingdom (Allen et al., 2008; Chapman et al., 2016). Though, the increasing popularity of residential solar photovoltaic systems in electricity markets has led some to suggest that it has created a positive feedback cycle or loop. Simply put a positive feedback cycle is a situation where, action A generates more of action B which in turn ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Hanly). ABSTRACT Micro renewable energy systems (MRES) such as Photovoltaic (PV) are an increasingly important element of National energy strategies. However, the success of these installations has given rise to a positive feedback cycle whereby increased customer adoption results in reduced demand from Utility providers. This leads to price increases and further incentives customers to adopt MRES. This paper investigates the existence of a positive feedback cycle by developing a theoretical model based on simultaneous equations and estimating it using the three stage least squares approach using data from the UK, Australian and Irish Markets. Results indicate strong support for the idea of a positive feedback cycle. This reinforces the need for stakeholders to consider this issue in framing future energy policies to ensure that the adoption of solar PV is supported in a sustainable way, while not punishing non-adopters with higher electricity rates

Higher 30-day mortality associated with the use of intramedullary nails compared with sliding hip screws for the treatment of trochanteric hip fractures:a prospective national registry study

Aims The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the type of operation used to treat a trochanteric fracture of the hip and 30-day mortality. Patients and Methods Data on 82 990 patients from the National Hip Fracture Database were analyzed using generalized linear models with incremental case-mix adjustment for patient, non-surgical and surgical characteristics, and socioeconomic factors. Results The use of short and long intramedullary nails was associated with an increase in 30-day mortality (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.125, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.040 to 1.218; p = 0.004) compared with the use of sliding hip screws (12.5% increase). If this were causative, it would represent 98 excess deaths over the four-year period of the study and one excess death would be caused by treating 112 patients with an intramedullary nail rather than a sliding hip screw. Conclusion There is a 12.5% increase in the risk of 30-day mortality associated with the use of an intramedullary nail compared with a sliding hip screw in the treatment of a trochanteric fractures of the hip.</p

Morphological asymmetry in mammals: genetics and homeostasis reconsidered

It has been hypothesized that developmental stability is increased at higher levels of genetic variability (heterozygosity) in animals. However, the existence of this relationship is questionable for homeotherms in general and mammals in particular. The difference between the sides of a bilateral character in an individual is a measure of fluctuating asymmetry that can be used as a measure of the developmental stability of mammals. Increased developmental stability should result in a greater degree of similarity between the right and left side of the body even though environmental variability would tend to increase the differences between right and left sides of the body. It is necessary to separate the effects of the three types of asymmetry so that an accurate estim.ate of the variance attributable to fluctuating asymmetry can be made. In addition, many early studies of asymmetry in poikilotherms used meristic characters (such as scale counts), and these types of characters are not easily studied in mammals. Mammals, because of their precise regulation of body temperature show little phenotypic effect of environmental variability, and thus may exhibit low absolute levels of asymmetry. Mammals may also be able to reduce the level of asymmetry during their prolonged intrauterine development and juvenile growth period. The literature is reviewed relative to relationships between genetic variation and asymmetry in mammals. Hypotheses are reviewed as they relate to the relationship between fluctuating asymmetry and heterozygosity observed in previous studies. Finally, recommendations are put forth regarding the design and interpretation of future research into the relationship between developmental homeostasis and genetic variability

Evolution of mammalian social structure

Social groups may be viewed as collections of individuals exhibiting nonindependent behavior and organized in a cooperative manner. The evolutionary advantage of social behavior to individuals must be measured in its relativity to other potential behaviors, the scale of competitive interactions, and under a variety of environmental and genetic constraints. A primary tenet of social evolution is that coancestry will promote the genes of related individuals. High values of coancestry, however, do not necessarily translate into evolutionary advantage unless the primary competitive interactions occur among the groups. Coancestry is affected by the breeding tactics within and rates of genetic exchange among social groups. Low rates of exchange among groups, regardless of breeding tactics, may result in high values for intragroup coancestry but may lead to inbreeding depression in progeny. Likewise, breeding tactics such as polygyny, may not impart any long-lasting evolutionary advantage if genetic exchange rates are high. The evolution of social organizations typified by different breeding and migration strategies is evaluated to determine the conditions necessary for various tactics to result in genetic contributions by individuals equal to those of monogamous mating systems. The models show that breeding and dispersal tactics have probably evolved in concert and predict that social groups which are characterized by strong gene correlations are likely to exhibit relatively low group advantage for progeny survival and breeding. There is little impetus for high gene correlations to accrue in situations where group advantage is very high relative to monogamous systems

Machine learning outperforms clinical experts in classification of hip fractures

Hip fractures are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the elderly, and incur high health and social care costs. Given projected population ageing, the number of incident hip fractures is predicted to increase globally. As fracture classification strongly determines the chosen surgical treatment, differences in fracture classification influence patient outcomes and treatment costs. We aimed to create a machine learning method for identifying and classifying hip fractures, and to compare its performance to experienced human observers. We used 3659 hip radiographs, classified by at least two expert clinicians. The machine learning method was able to classify hip fractures with 19% greater accuracy than humans, achieving overall accuracy of 92%