In this book well-known experts highlight cutting-edge research priorities and discuss the state of the art in the field of solid oxide fuel cells giving an update on specific subjects such as protonic conductors, interconnects, electrocatalytic and catalytic processes and modelling approaches.Fundamentals and advances in this field are illustrated to help young researchers address issues in the characterization of materials and in the analysis of processes, not often tackled in scholarly books.

This book attempts to explain what went wrong in California's restructured energy markets and what must be done to restore California's economy and build new electricity systems. The intention here is to reconcile the principles of competition and regulation. California had a severe electricity crisis for about thirteen months beginning in May of 2000. The economic consequences and political fallout that arose from this crisis persist. California's economy continues to suffer and the state's treasury is deeply in debt. The state's three investor-owned utilities were nearly financially decimated. San Diego Gas & Electric has recovered to a greater degree than the other two only because its retail prices are about three times the national average and, for a time, well above the other two IOUs in California. Southern California Edison has recently been restored to investment grade and was granted a rate increase. Pacific Gas & Electric is emerging from bankruptcy. This book discusses all of this in greater detail. The problems and consequences arising from California's ill-fated foray into electricity market restructuring could damage the state for years to come. Challenges of this nature are not new to the Golden State. In the past, as we explain here, pragmatic, not entrenched, approaches have worked best in California. If California is to relatively quickly restore its previous enviable economic vitality and recover from the damage done to tarnish its luster, pragmatic approaches must again be used.

The blackout of 2003 illuminated just how dependent America is on electricity. It was not just that some 50 million people in eight states and Ontario were cut off from their televisions, microwaves, ATMs, and email. Without the electrical juice to keep their sockets alive, factory managers were forced to close production lines, city managers shut down water deliveries, grocery store clerks watched their frozen inventory slowly melt away. Economists estimated that the blackout cost Americans $5 billion even as energy analysts were predicting that a similar blackout could happen again. The catastrophe forced us to marvel at the unusual ability of sub-microscopic particles to move like waves inside a wire and cause bulbs to glow. It highlighted the complex requirements for managing the massive generators, transformers, transmission lines, and switch boxes needed to tap and deliver flowing electrons. It encouraged us to recognize the profound impact of electricity on all aspects of commerce and culture. Such events as the blackout, the Enron debacle, and the California "brownouts" also reveal the cracks in a 100-year-old industry structure that have been building ever since Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and their contemporaries first managed to harness electricity and make it available to the masses, and tycoons, such as Sam Insull and George Norris, began to concentrate financial control and political influence. From Edison to Enron traces the controversial history of this $210 billion industry--the nation's largest--showcasing the key individuals, technological innovations, corporate machinations, and political battles that have been waged over its domination. Munson maintains thattoday's technological and regulatory infrastructure, as a function of its history, is a relic that has long outlived its usefulness; he points out that two-thirds of the fuel burned to generate electricity is lost, that Americans pay roughly $100 billion too much each year for heat and power, and that environmentally unfriendly generators are the nation's largest polluters. Meanwhile, innovations in technology and business models are being blocked by entrenched monopolies. Ultimately, Munson argues that current policies and practices, including those favored by the Bush Administration, are preventing entrepreneurs from producing more efficient, healthy, and sustainable power supplies. Moreover, he presents an agenda for business and policy reforms that will stimulate economic development in the United States and around the world.

Due to the characteristics of electricity, power markets rank among the most complex markets operated at present. The requirements of an environmentally sustainable, economically efficient, and secure energy supply have resulted in the emergence of several interrelated markets that have to be carefully engineered in order to ensure efficient market outcomes.

This book presents an agent-based simulation model that facilitates electricity market research. Simulation outcomes from this model are validated against price data from German power markets. The results significantly contribute to existing research in agent-based simulation and electricity market modeling, and provide insights into the impact of the market structure and market design on electricity prices.

The book addresses researchers, lecturers and students who are interested in applying agent-based simulation to power markets. It provides a thorough discussion of the methodology and helpful details for model implementation.

This book aims to make the best use of fine-grained smart meter data to process and translate them into actual information and incorporated into consumer behavior modeling and distribution system operations. It begins with an overview of recent developments in smart meter data analytics. Since data management is the basis of further smart meter data analytics and its applications, three issues on data management, i.e., data compression, anomaly detection, and data generation, are subsequently studied. The following works try to model complex consumer behavior. Specific works include load profiling, pattern recognition, personalized price design, socio-demographic information identification, and household behavior coding. On this basis, the book extends consumer behavior in spatial and temporal scale. Works such as consumer aggregation, individual load forecasting, and aggregated load forecasting are introduced. We hope this book can inspire readers to define new problems, apply novel methods, and obtain interesting results with massive smart meter data or even other monitoring data in the power systems.

The electric power sector operates under an archaic regulatory system that is ill-equipped to oversee a competitive, restructured, regionally-organized industry. This book offers the first systematic discourse on regional aspects of regulatory reform, sharing topical perspectives from leading actors and regional case studies that show how the debate plays out on the ground. It frames the policy debate, applies economic and political theoretical lenses to federalism issues, and outlines options for regulatory reform, modes of cooperation, and an analytical basis for decisions. Most important, it provides a strategic road map for the industry over the coming decade. Contributors include current and former regulators at the State and Federal levels, senior utility executives, leading advocates, government policy makers and academics, including Michael Danielson, Michehl Gent, Kenneth Gordon, Kevin Kelly, Raymond Maliszewski, Richard O'Neill, Jackie Pfannensteil, Mary Sharpe Hayes, Charles Stalon, and many others.

Norwegian deregulation was, together with the British model, a pioneer forerunner in the restructuring of European electricity industry. The Norwegian model, unlike the British, did not change ownership or structure, but relied heavily on a radical opening of the market way down to household consumers. It also developed a more advanced pool system based on actual bidding both on the supply and demand side, as well as triggering the first regional integrated competitive power market in the world. This book draws on a wide range of applied research and gives a summary of the Norwegian experience.

`Electric energy must be treated as a commodity which can be bought, sold, and traded, taking into account its time- and space-varying values and costs.` Spot Pricing of Electricity, Schweppe et al, 1988. Computational Auction Mechanisms for Restructured Power Industry Operation outlines the application of auction methods for all aspects of power system operation, primarily for a competitive environment. A complete description of the industry structure as well as the various markets now being formed is given. A thorough introduction to auction basics is included to explain how auctions have grown in other industries. Auction methods are compared to classical techniques for power system analysis, operations, and planning. The traditional applications of economic dispatch, optimal power flow and unit commitment are compared to auction mechanisms. Algorithms for auctions using linearized power flow equations, DC power flow equations, and AC power flow equations are included. The bundling of supportive services, known as ancillary services within the United States, is discussed. Extensions to the basic auction algorithms for inclusion of supportive services as well as algorithms for scheduling and bidding on generation for GENCOs or independent power producers are presented. Algorithms for scheduling and contracting with customers are also presented for energy service companies. An introduction to the various commodity and financial market products includes the use of futures and options for GENCOs. The material is useful for students performing research on the new business environment based on competition. Regulators will find information on initial methods of designing and evaluating market systems, and power exchange and financial analysts will find information on the interdependence of markets and power system-based techniques for risk management. This information compares the new business environment solutions with old business environment solutions. Computational Auction Mechanisms for Restructured Power Industry Operation provides a first introduction to how electricity will be traded as a commodity in the future.

The unprecedented financial pressures facing today's electric utilities have encouraged the evolution of conservation as a planning strategy. Electric Utility Conservation Programs is the first book to isolate the problems electric utilities encounter and document the solutions they are finding throughout the design, operation, marketing, and evaluation stages of their conservation programs. Including coverage of customer acceptance of their programs and how they can be monitored, this new work is a practical guide for anyone connected with electrical utilities, such as regulatory agencies, researchers, policymakers, and strategists. Topics include: energy conservation, electric utility conservation programs, demand-side planning, demand-side management, and energy utilization.

Sustainable energy services to customers - a balanced choice and coordination of energy generated by traditional and alternative sources - are the subject of this new innovative book. The myriad factors involved in modeling an effective sustainable power system are overwhelming. The Green Islands project represents a decade of work by over a dozen researchers who have developed a model designed to utilize the potential of distributed clean resources. The key is the proper use of Information Technology (IT).Sited on two islands in the Azores, the project developed the model of careful forecasting of demand and supply, down to the minute, coordinating the output of conventional power plants, wind energy, fly wheels, hydroelectricity, demand reduction, and even plug-in electric vehicles to take full advantage of the clean resources available. The energy contingencies of the remote islands are not unique. The issues of integrating promising clean technologies, such as wind, into a complex power grid are challenging in geographically far-flung, island-scale, power systems.
Model-based sensing, communications, and decision-making algorithms to coordinate adaptive load management (ALM) could enable customers to utilize just-in-time (JIT), just-in-place (JIP), and just-in-context (JIC) energy resources. The distribution of flexible and efficient energy to customers is the goal. The model the authors have developed could change the way power portfolios are built. A new perspective for optimization of green energy is presented in this book. Additional data provided online via Springer represents a repository of real-world electric energy systems and its IT-enabled smarts."

Transport Pricing of Electricity Networks aims at providing a methodological and practical transmission tariff guide, to those who are involved in the electricity business as managers, engineers, lawyers, economists, regulators or policy-makers, but are not specialists in electricity transport, nor in tariff-setting for public utilities. It offers a synthesis of the recent economic research on the subject. The volume is divided into three major parts, each presenting a general aspect of transmission pricing: its legal and accounting background, its basic theory, and its implementation, successively.
How much does it cost to transmit electricity from a nuclear plant close to Lyon in France, to a car manufacturer located in Stuttgart in Germany? What price should a system operator in Canada charge a pulp and paper mill that uses the high-voltage grid for only a few weeks per year? Where in California is it more profitable to reinforce or build a new transmission line? What is the best place to locate a power gas station in England, in order to pay the lowest transmission cost? Such questions are novel and crucial for American and European liberalised electricity markets. Transport Pricing of Electricity Networks shows how the economics toolbox can be used to answer them.

The writing of this book was largely motivated by the ongoing unprecedented world-wide restructuring of the power industry. This move away from the traditional monopolies and toward greater competition, in the form of increased numbers of independent power producers and an unbundling of the main services that were until now provided by the utilities, has been building up for over a decade. This change was driven by the large disparities in electricity tariffs across regions, by technological developments that make it possible for small producers to compete with large ones, and by a widely held belief that competition will be beneficial in a broad sense. All of this together with the political will to push through the necessary legislative reforms has created a climate conducive to restructuring in the electric power industry. Consequently, since the beginning of this decade dramatic changes have taken place in an ever-increasing list of nations, from the pioneering moves in the United Kingdom, Chile and Scandinavia, to today's highly fluid power industry throughout North and South America, as well as in the European Community. The drive to restructure and take advantage of the potential economic benefits has, in our view, forced the industry to take actions and make choices at a hurried pace, without the usual deliberation and thorough analysis of possible implications. We must admit that to speak of "the industry" at this juncture is perhaps disingenuous, even misleading.

This book is a comprehensive, clear, and well-organized description of applied quality regulation in the electricity sector as it is today. It creates an essential bridge linking the theoretical aspects of service quality regulation with country-specific applied mechanisms. As a special feature, the book offers a survey of the most innovative regulatory mechanisms under proposal, in test stages, or in effect in European countries.

What kinds (according to U.S. News & World Report) of clean electricity initiatives-ones that make sense on public policy and business strategy levels-could overcome the hurdles in shifting away from the entrenched electricity and petroleum-based transport industries in the United States? This book explores the tremendous opportunities of the new electricity revolution that looks to threaten the century-old business models of our existing power production infrastructure. The electricity industry, having been in place for more than 100 years, has established tremendous power and influence. But as solar- and wind-based energy businesses gain small footholds and expand their impact, the incumbent electricity businesses face fundamental challenges that threaten their century-old business models. Will technological advances and the motivation to control climate change finally effect a revolution in the electricity markets? This unique book proposes public policy- and business strategy-level initiatives that could overcome the structural impediments that prevail in the current electricity industries and predicts the important changes to come in the immediate and distant future. In The Microgrid Revolution: Business Strategies for Next-Generation Electricity, author Mahesh P. Bhave explains the current state of electricity production, identifies its widespread problems, and proposes a specific approach and particular solution to the puzzle of supplying clean energy for the 21st-century world. The introductory chapters lay the groundwork for the author's provocative thesis, and the concluding chapters elaborate on it with broad implications. By examining the subject material from the perspectives of public policy and regulatory concerns, corporate strategy, industry structure changes, innovation, and climate change as well as from a technological angle, readers from diverse industries and professional backgrounds will be able to understand how the coming electricity revolution is something we all have the power to influence. Synthesizes seemingly disparate concepts from the telecom and electricity industries with business strategy and policy and regulatory issues, allowing readers to see the tremendous opportunity at hand in clean electricity technologies Describes a novel network topology for a next-generation electricity grid Provides unique insights from the perspective of a chemical engineer who is also a faculty member of a business school and has served as a corporate strategy executive in the telecom industry

Electric utilities throughout the world continue to face new challenges involving ownership, market structure, and regulation. There are three related issues at hand. First, should ownership be private or public? Second, what operations should be integrated and where is competition feasible? Third, where is regulation necessary and can it be made more efficient? This volume bears directly upon these concerns. The book contains two sections. The first six articles discuss the British electricity experiment that has privatized and disintegrated the nation's generation, transmission, and distribution companies, introduced market competition for power purchases, and implemented incentive regulation for monopolized transmission and distribution grids. The remaining articles focus on the theater in which significant microeconomic issues will continue to emerge, most immediately in the U.K. and U.S.A. -- the coordination and pricing of transmission.

Examines the history of electricity provision in Africa and the effects of privatization and infrastructure changes in energy transformation, offering a critical window into development politics in African states. No country has managed to develop beyond a subsistence economy without ensuring at least minimum access to electricity for the majority of its population. Yet many sub-Saharan African countries struggle to meet demand. Why is this, and what can be done to reduce energy poverty and further Africa's development? Examining the politics and processes surrounding electricity infrastructure, provision and reform, the author provides an overview of historical andcontemporary debates about access in the sub-continent, and explores the shifting role and influence of national governments and of multilateral agencies in energy reform decisions. He describes a challenging political environment for electricity supply, with African governments becoming increasingly frustrated with the rules and the processes of multilateral donors. Civil society also began to question reform choices, and governments in turn looked to new development partners, such as China, to chart a fresh path of energy transformation. Drawing on over fifteen years of research on Uganda, which has one of the lowest levels of access to electricity in Africa and has struggled to construct several, large hydroelectric dams on the Nile, Gore argues that there is a critical need to recognize how the changing political and social context in African countries, and globally, has affected the capacity tofulfil national energy goals, minimize energy poverty and transform economies. Christopher Gore is Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. OA EDITION This book has been made available as Open Access through the support of the Office of the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University; Ryerson International; and the Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University.

Electricity markets are being deregulated or face new regulatory frameworks. In such changing markets, new pricing strategies will need to consider such factors as cost, value of service and pricing by objective. Pricing in Competitive Electricity Markets introduces a new family of pricing concepts, methodologies, models, tools and databases focused on market-based pricing. This book reviews important theoretical pricing issues as well as practical pricing applications for changing electricity markets.

Power Structure examines the effects on economic performance of several key features of the U.S. electric power industry. Paramount among these are public versus private ownership, vertical integration versus deintegration, and retail competition versus monopoly distribution. Each of these, as well as other structural characteristics of utilities and their markets, are analyzed for their effects on costs and price. These issues are important for a number of reasons. The U.S. electric power industry is presently embarking on a fundamental restructuring in terms of integration and competition. In other countries, privatization of state-owned enterprises is being viewed as the answer to unsatisfactory performance. From a longer perspective, the question of the relative performance of publicly owned versus privately owned utilities in the U.S. has never been resolved. And despite much speculation there is little reliable evidence as to the importance of either vertical integration or competition.

Over the years, the electric power industry has been using optimization methods to help them solve the unit commitment problem. The result has been savings of tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel costs. Things are changing, however. Optimization technology is improving, and the industry is undergoing radical restructuring. Consequently, the role of commitment models is changing, and the value of the improved solutions that better algorithms might yield is increasing. The dual purpose of this book is to explore the technology and needs of the next generation of computer models for aiding unit commitment decisions. Because of the unit commitment problem's size and complexity and because of the large economic benefits that could result from its improved solution, considerable attention has been devoted to algorithm development in the book. More systematic procedures based on a variety of widely researched algorithms have been proposed and tested. These techniques have included dynamic programming, branch-and-bound mixed integer programming (MIP), linear and network programming approaches, and Benders decomposition methods, among others. Recently, metaheuristic methods have been tested, such as genetic programming and simulated annealing, along with expert systems and neural networks. Because electric markets are changing rapidly, how UC models are solved and what purposes they serve need reconsideration. Hence, the book brings together people who understand the problem and people who know what improvements in algorithms are really possible. The two-fold result in The Next Generation of Electric Power Unit Commitment Models is an assessment of industry needs and new formulations and computational approaches that promise to make unit commitment models more responsive to those needs.

Deregulation of Electric Utilities reviews the main issues relating to the changing environment in the utility industry. Topics covered in depth include compensation for stranded costs, efficiency gains, institutional design, pricing, economics of scale, and network externalities. In addition, this book assesses early experiences in electricity deregulation in continental Europe, New Zealand, North America, and the United Kingdom.

An examination of key issues in electric utilities restructuring. It covers: electric utility markets in and out of the USA; the Open Access Same-time Information System; tagging transactions; trading energy; hedging tools for managing risks in various markets; pricing volatility, risk and forecasting; regional transmission organization; and more. The text contains acronyms, a contract specifications sample, examples, and nearly 500 bibliographic citations, tables, and drawings.

The challenges facing participants in competitive electricity markets are staggering: high price volatility introduces significant financial risk into an industry accustomed to guaranteed rates of return, while illiquid forward markets prevent effective hedging strategies from being implemented. Valuation, Hedging and Speculation in Competitive Electricity Markets: A Fundamental Approach, examines the unique properties which separate electricity from other traded commodities, including the lack of economical storage, and the impact of a scarce transmission network. The authors trace the sources of uncertainties in the price of electricity to underlying physical and economic processes, and incorporate these into a bid-based model for electricity spot and forward prices. They also illustrate how insufficient market data can be circumvented by using a combination of price and load data in the marking- to-market process. The model is applied to three classes of problems central to the operation of any electric utility or power marketer; valuing generation assets, formulating dynamic hedging strategies for load serving obligations, and pricing transmission contracts and locational spread options. Emphasis is placed on the difference between trades which can be 'booked out' in the forward markets, and those which must be carried through to delivery. Lately, significant attention has been given to the role of regulators in mitigating excessive price levels in electricity markets. The authors conduct a quantitative analysis of the long-term effects of regulatory intervention through the use of price caps. By modeling the dynamic interplay between the observed price levels and the decision toinvest in new generation assets, it is shown how such short term fixes can lead to long term deficits in the available generation capacity, and ultimately to market failures and blackouts.

This guidebook for managers and other decision makers analyses all important aspects that have to be considered when evaluating photovoltaics as a potential option in the power-supply industry and industrial development. Since such an analysis is quite complex and requires know-how from several scientific disciplines, the book draws upon the expertise of about 40 invited experts. Consensus statements on some of the controversial items such as cost development or energy pay-back time are given. In addition, the book is rounded out by an evaluation of the technological status of photovoltaics. The Photovoltaics Guidebook for Decision Makers enables readers to form their own opinions, particularly on the realistic potential and role of photovoltaics in energy policy, the power-supply industry and industrial development.

On the surface the new president seems to inherit an empty house," Hugh Heclo, a recognized expert on American democratic institutions, has noted. "In fact, he enters an office already shaped and crowded by other people's desires." Empowering the White House examines how Richard Nixon entered that crowded Oval Office in 1969 yet managed to change it in a way that augmented the power of the presidency and continues to influence into the twenty-first century how his successors have governed.

Nixon's White House is perhaps best remembered for the growth in the size of the staff, which operated under the supposed iron fist of H. R. Haldeman. But more important than size and management style to the character of the Nixon White House were the assigned tasks, complexity, and dynamics of the burgeoning staff. Faced with hostile majorities in Congress and executive branch careerists assumed to be committed to a Democratic agenda, Nixon sought to control his political fate by engaging more actively than earlier presidents in public relations and the mobilization of support. At the command and under the control of the Oval Office, the staff carried out assignments designed to fulfill Nixon's aims.

This theoretically informed and well-researched study explains how Nixon changed and expanded the institutionalized presidency and how that affected the Ford and Carter administrations. Nixon ushered in a new stage in the modern presidency by organizing and using his increasingly complex staff in new ways that have persisted beyond the 1970s to this day. To a greater degree than any predecessor, Nixon systematized outreach, legal advice, and policy formulation. His White House staffing, then, has come to be regarded as a "standard model" that influences incoming presidents regardless of party affiliation.

Leavening this organizational study are revealing accounts of how the Nixon, Ford, and Carter staffs operated behind the scenes in the West Wing. Anyone needing to know how the White House worked during those presidencies--or how it has worked since--will find this book invaluable.

This timely research review explores the main issues surrounding competition and regulation in electricity markets. The industry is experiencing irresistible forces for change driven by energy policy objectives; a reassessment of market regulation in the face of high energy prices and the response to consumer pressure to agree on what constitutes a fair price for energy. This research review identifies the key articles that underpin the debate across the industries supply chain (generation, supply and networks) and from a regulatory perspective (including market power and incentive regulation) followed by a consideration of the overall impact of liberalisation and future developments.