Relying on storage or ICT? How to maintain low voltage grids' stability with an increasing feed-in of fluctuating renewable energy sources

Since the beginning of the new century our electricity system is changing rapidly. Distributed energy resources, such as wind or solar energies are becoming more and more important. These energies are producing fluctuating electricity, which is fed into low voltage distribution grids. The resulting volatility complicates the exact balancing of demand and supply. These changes can lead to distribution grid instabilities, damages of electronic devices or even power outages and might therefore end in deadweight losses affecting all electricity users. A concept to tackle this challenge is matching demand with supply in real-time, which is known as smart grids. In this study, we focus on two smart grids' key components: decentralized electricity storages and smart meters. The aim of this study is to provide new insights concerning the low diffusion of smart meters and decentralized electricity storages and to examine whether we are facing situations of positive externalities. During our study we conducted eight in-depth expert interviews. Our findings show that the diffusion of smart meters as well as decentralized electricity storages is widely seen as beneficial to society. This study identifies the most important stakeholders and various related private costs and benefits. As private benefits are numerous but widely distributed among distinct players, we argue that we face situations of positive externalities and thus societal desirable actions are omitted. We identify and discuss measures to foster diffusion of the two studied smart grid key components. Surprisingly, we find that direct interventions like subsidies are mostly not seen as appropriate even by experts from industries that would directly benefit from them. As the most important point, we identified well-designed and clearly defined regulatory and legal frameworks that are free of contradictions. --smart meter,decentralized electricity storage,smart grid,externality

Location-Based Advertising and Contextual Mobile Targeting

Understanding how location-based services (LBS) can leverage sales in stores is important for retailers. LBS are a means to target users by making use of their location via GPS-enabled smartphones. Further, the ubiquitous nature of smartphones increases the importance of additional contextual factors such as time and weather. In particular, we analyze how context can be used to improve predicting responses to mobile promotions by applying unique GPS data. We examine the interplay between location, time, weather and co-location and users’ responses to mobile coupons. Our study reveals that context indeed improves predicting users’ responses to mobile promotions. First, distance is negatively correlated to users’ coupon choices. Second, users have different time-specific preferences. Third, temperature is negatively associated to users’ choices. Fourth, the number of co-located users is negatively related to their coupon response. Our results can be seen as input variables for retailers that aim to conduct mobile targeting

Measuring The Effectiveness of Location-Based Mobile Push vs. Pull Targeting

Mobile targeting allows firms to approach users at the right time at the right location and on the right device. The two main targeting approaches are either mobile push (e.g., message sent upon entering a store™s vicinity) or mobile pull, where users ac

The Interplay of Retargeting and Location Revisits in Location-Based Advertising

The proliferation of mobile sensing technologies has enabled firms to target ads based on consumers’ location, also known as location-based advertising (LBA). We propose that firms consider a new targeting method for LBA that we call location retargeting – displaying mobile advertising offers to users who revisit the area around a particular store. Using a large data set from a major European telecommunications service provider, we investigate the effectiveness of location retargeting relative to retargeting - displaying ads that have previously been displayed (independently from the location history of the targeted user). We find that location revisits significantly improve click rates, demonstrating the potential of location retargeting. Compared to first-time visits, the first exposure to offers at revisited locations lead to a 64.8 percent higher response. Further, controlling for retargeting and location revisits also improves the goodness of fit of our offer response model