optimal electricity market for wind power abstract this paper is about electricity market operation when looking from the wind power producers point of view the focus in on market time horizons how many hours there is between the closing and delivering the bids the case is for the nordic countries the nordpool electricity market and the danish wind power production real data from year 2001 was used to study the benefits of a more flexible market to wind power producer as a result of reduced regulating market costs from better hourly predictions to the market wind power producer would gain up to 8 more if the time between market bids and delivery was shortened from the day ahead elspot market hourly bids by noon for 12 36 h ahead an after sales market where surplus or deficit production could be traded 2 h before delivery could benefit the producer almost as much gaining 7

short term load forecasting based on a semi parametric additive model short term load forecasting is an essential instrument in power system planning operation and control many operating decisions are based on load forecasts such as dispatch scheduling of generating capacity reliability analysis and maintenance planning for the generators overestimation of electricity demand will cause a conservative operation which leads to the start up of too many units or excessive energy purchase thereby supplying an unnecessary level of reserve on the other hand underestimation may result in a risky operation with insufficient preparation of spinning reserve causing the system to operate in a vulnerable region to the disturbance in this paper semi parametric additive models are proposed to estimate the relationships between demand and the driver variables specifically the inputs for these models are calendar variables lagged actual demand observations and historical and forecast temperature traces for one or more sites in the target power system in addition to point forecasts prediction intervals are also estimated using a modified bootstrap method suitable for the complex seasonality seen in electricity demand data the proposed methodology has been used to forecast the half hourly electricity demand for up to seven days ahead for power systems in the australian national electricity market the performance of the methodology is validated via out of sample experiments with real data from the power system as well as through on site implementation by the system operator

portfolio optimization using mixture design of experiments scheduling trades within electricity markets abstract deregulation of the electricity sector has given rise to several approaches to defining optimal portfolios of energy contracts financial tools requiring substantial adjustments are usually used to determine risk and return this article presents a novel approach to adjusting the conditional value at risk cvar metric to the mix of contracts on the energy markets the approach uses mixture design of experiments mde in this kind of experimental strategy the design factors are treated as proportions in a mixture system considered quite adequate for treating portfolios in general instead of using traditional linear programming the concept of desirability function is here used to combine the multi response nonlinear objective functions for mean with the variance of a specific portfolio obtained through mde the maximization of the desirability function is implied in the portfolio optimization generating an efficient recruitment frontier this approach offers three main contributions it includes risk aversion in the optimization routine it assesses interaction between contracts and it lessens the computational effort required to solve the constrained nonlinear optimization problem a case study based on the brazilian energy market is used to illustrate the proposal the numerical results verify the proposal s adequacy

the impact of intraday markets on the market value of flexibility decomposing effects on profile and the imbalance costs abstract an increasing share of variable renewable energy sources vres basically affects the electricity price formation in two ways 1 the so called merit order effect tends to lower the base price level and challenges conventional plants to remain profitable 2 due to the variable nature of renewable energy infeed the short term demand for flexibility increases and changes the volatility of electricity prices the more variable prices offer opportunities for controllable electricity producers ceps who provide up and down ramping flexibility to increase their revenues in contrast the vres with high degrees of simultaneity tend to pay for this flexibility in the electricity spot market to reduce their imbalance exposure the intraday market idm for electricity has gained importance for the market value of different technologies lately and continues to expand due to the increasing efforts to balance within day deviation from day ahead schedules this article presents a combination and extension of two existing models to capture the peculiarities of the intraday price formation and to analyze the impact of the idm on the market value of vres and ceps doing so the paper suggests an adjustment of the classical market value factor metric and to go beyond classical day ahead market dam information the article shows that market value factors mvfs can be stabilized if the idm delivers market based price signals for the costs of flexibility that are sufficient to activate flexibilities prior to the usually more expensive imbalance mechanism ibm yet the mvfs from single vre technologies will worsen if their market share is high enough to outweigh forecast errors from other technologies and if they become a permanent price maker in the idm and the ibm

organization and functioning of liberalized electricity markets an overview of the dutch market abstract in this paper we examine the organization and the functioning of the dutch electricity market first we describe the organization of the dutch electricity supply chain and the role of the main market participants including the transmission system operator distribution system operators program responsible parties and metering companies we then describe the organization of financial trading and clearing mechanism of electricity through the organized futures exchange the european energy derivatives exchange and the spot market amsterdam power exchange which includes the day ahead market and intra day markets we also detail the functioning of the imbalance market and reserve capacity management in the netherlands through a set of numerical analysis we provide an exploratory analysis of the apx day ahead spot prices and the real time imbalance prices using electricity price data from 2002 to 2013 we observe the price spikes both in the day ahead and imbalance markets usually occur around 6 10 am and 5 7 pm we also observe that in the imbalance market system overages happen significantly more often than shortages pointing out that the market tends to buy more than what is demanded this could be explained by the risk attitude of the market participants in the imbalance market

financial market models with levy processes and time varying volatility abstract asset management and pricing models require the proper modeling of the return distribution of financial assets while the return distribution used in the traditional theories of asset pricing and portfolio selection is the normal distribution numerous studies that have investigated the empirical behavior of asset returns in financial markets throughout the world reject the hypothesis that asset return distributions are normally distribution alternative models for describing return distributions have been proposed since the 1960s with the strongest empirical and theoretical support being provided for the family of stable distributions with the normal distribution being a special case of this distribution since the turn of the century specific forms of the stable distribution have been proposed and tested that better fit the observed behavior of historical return distributions more specifically subclasses of the tempered stable distribution have been proposed in this paper we propose one such subclass of the tempered stable distribution which we refer to as the kr distribution we empirically test this distribution as well as two other recently proposed subclasses of the tempered stable distribution the carr geman madan yor cgmy distribution and the modified tempered stable mts distribution the advantage of the kr distribution over the other two distributions is that it has more flexible tail parameters for these three subclasses of the tempered stable distribution which are infinitely divisible and have exponential moments for some neighborhood of zero we generate the exponential levy market models induced from them we then construct a new garch model with the infinitely divisible distributed innovation and three subclasses of that garch model that incorporates three observed properties of asset returns volatility clustering fat tails and skewness we formulate the algorithm to find the risk neutral return processes for those garch models using the change of measure for the tempered stable distributions to compare the performance of those exponential levy models and the garch models we report the results of the parameters estimated for the s p 500 index and investigate the out of sample forecasting performance for those garch models for the s p 500 option prices

bric by bric the role of the family household in sustaining a venture in impoverished indian slums we advance understanding of the embedded role of the family household in governing firm performance in an impoverished setting drawing on bricolage theory which articulates how individuals make do with resources at hand we suggest that family household diversity facilitates creativity while family household shared business experience facilitates routinization while initially performance enhancing unfettered creativity and overroutinization have detrimental effects and thus expect the highest levels of performance to occur at moderate levels of family household diversity and shared business experience we find general support for our hypotheses using a large sample of firms and families in impoverished indian households

contract durations in the electricity market causal impact of 15 min trading on the epex spot market abstract the european power exchange epex introduced two new products in 2011 and 2014 which reduce the delivery duration of electricity from 1 h to 15 min intervals these changes to the market design aim to better reflect the intermittent power generation from renewable energy sources however little is known about trading in shorter intervals and its impact on the existing market as a remedy our evaluation first shows that the market has quickly adopted the new 15 min contracts second we estimate a bayesian structural time series which measures a causal decrease of electricity prices depending on the model specification our results indicate that the reduction can be as high as 28 for existing hourly contracts subsequent to the introduction of 15 min trading third the use of 15 min contracts coincides with intermittent power generation as it incentivizes renewable energy providers to offer additional electricity altogether our findings suggest that 15 min trading is used to balance the intra hour volatility of renewable energy sources consequently this presents a blueprint for policy makers who can attain similar price reductions and larger feed ins from renewable energy sources without direct costs in all countries with high shares of renewable energy sources

the german paradox in the balancing power markets abstract this paper provides answers to questions raised by hirth and ziegenhagen 1 regarding the german paradox in the balancing power markets we show that in spite of the increasing energy production from variable renewable energy sources there is no need for a higher demand of balancing power in germany because adaptations in the energy market design were undertaken and grid control cooperations led to immense efficiency savings additionally we investigate the price developments in the german secondary balancing power market we find evidence that the suppliers coordinate on a price level which is far above the competitive level and that they orientate their power bids towards previous auction prices

political competition and renewable energy transitions over long time horizons a dynamic approach abstract climate change mitigation requires sustainable energy transitions but their political dynamics are poorly understood this article presents a general dynamic model of renewable energy policy with long time horizons endogenous electoral competition and techno political path dependence we calibrate the model with data on the economics of contemporary renewable energy technologies in doing so we discover transition dynamics not present in economy energy models which ignore politics or in formal political economy models which ignore long term technological dynamics we show that the largest effects of partisan ideology on policy occur when the competing parties disagree on the importance of energy policy in these cases the less ideological party appeases the more ideological one while the more ideological party attempts to appease the electorate the results demonstrate that political dynamics could have large effects on the development of renewable energy and carbon dioxide emissions over time influencing the ability of countries to reach various climate mitigation trajectories

aggregator controlled ev charging in pay as bid reserve markets with strict delivery constraints electric vehicles evs similar to other types of flexible loads can be controlled to provide additional flexibility to power system operators which is needed to transition from primarily fossil fuel based electricity generation to more renewable generation existing electricity markets already provide economic incentives to offer flexibility so called aggregators in charge of controlling ev charging could take advantage of these incentives however random driving behavior and area specific market rules complicate the market participation of ev aggregators in energy and reserve markets the goal of this paper is to investigate the design and performance of a system that would enable ev aggregators to participate in wholesale electricity markets we consider a certain type of market environment which includes an intraday energy market and pay as bid reserve markets that require exact reserve delivery and have long operating intervals we therefore propose a novel approach for concurrent market participation that can deal with these constraints even when faced with highly uncertain reserve activation and ev behavior

poverty and the varieties of entrepreneurship in the pursuit of prosperity abstract in this paper we revisit the entrepreneurship and poverty relationship under a eudaimonic perspective that brings together conversion factors and future prosperity expectations based on an fsqca of changes in life circumstances of 166 farm households in rural kenya we explore how different combinations of conversion factors enable distinct forms of entrepreneuring in the pursuit of prosperity results show that strong entrepreneurship enabled future prosperity expectations result from three combinations of enabling conversion factors shaping up three varieties of entrepreneurial endeavors family frugal individual market and family inwards which show a much more diverse and counterintuitive reality our research contributes to literature by revealing and theorizing on a split picture portraying the many ways in which farmers acting as everyday entrepreneurs exploit real opportunities in seemingly identical impoverished communities it also reveals a central disconnect between entrepreneurship life satisfaction and financial improvements when assessed against expectations of future prosperity in doing so this paper responds to calls for a better understanding of the processes whereby entrepreneurship can distinctively improve current and future life circumstances and the many ways in which this may happen

consumption based and territory based carbon emissions intensity determinants and forecasting using club convergence across countries abstract understanding the dynamics of carbon emissions across time and space is important when formulating energy policies to minimise climate changes in the future if per capita carbon emissions or carbon intensity converge over time then any negotiation of multilateral agreements will be easier than if convergence is absent it is also possible for club convergence to exist where countries within a club converge but countries between clubs do not converge we examine the convergence of consumption based and territory based carbon emissions intensity across 70 countries we find two convergent clubs for consumption based emissions and three convergent clubs for territory based emissions increases in each of total factor productivity renewable energy consumption and urbanisation increase the odds of belonging to a low carbon emissions intensity club an increase in industry value added reduces the odds of belonging to a low carbon intensity club increases in total factor productivity can be obtained through effective macroeconomic policy while increasing renewable energy consumption may require structural changes in economies focused on transitioning to a low carbon economy under a business as usual forecasting scenario the number of consumption based carbon emissions intensity clubs increases between 2014 and 2030 making it more difficult to negotiate multilateral agreements on climate change in the future

a survey of frequency and voltage control ancillary services part i technical features this two part paper surveys the frequency and voltage control ancillary services in power systems from various parts of the world in this second part essential economic features that must be taken into account when designing markets for ancillary services are first discussed the methods adopted in eight different systems australia france germany great britain new zealand pjm spain and sweden for trading frequency and voltage control ancillary services are then compared lastly new indicators for comparing volumes and costs of ancillary services across systems are proposed and calculated for the systems included in this survey the companion paper surveys the technical features of these ancillary services

changes to gate closure and its impact on wholesale electricity prices the case of the uk abstract the electricity supply industry in the united kingdom underwent a number of regulatory reforms since late 80 s that have transformed the trading and pricing of the energy market herein we provide empirical evidence that the modification proposal p12 mod p12 that took place in 7 2 2002 moving the gate closure gc interval from 3 5 h to 1 h before real time has caused a permanent alteration in the uk spot price volatility using a combination of recurrence plot rp and recurrence quantification analysis rqa we find that after the the change in the gc time short term price volatility significantly decreased between 2001 and 2008 while long term price volatility is not affected by cg change similar results are obtained by means of spectral analysis on the price series showing a significant reduction in its variability the results of our analysis suggest that a dynamical regime shift of the price occurred and such shift is linked to the gc change whereby shorter gc intervals facilitate short term forecasting on electricity demand and better reliability on the supply side therefore gc closer to real time is associated to reduced price fluctuations in the wholesale market

modeling special day effects for forecasting intraday electricity demand abstract we propose and apply a novel approach for modeling special day effects to predict electricity demand in korea notably we model special day effects on an hourly rather than a daily basis hourly specified predictor variables are implemented in the regression model with a seasonal autoregressive moving average sarma type error structure in order to efficiently reflect the special day effects the interaction terms between the hour of day effects and the hourly based special day effects are also included to capture the unique intraday patterns of special days more accurately the multiplicative sarma mechanism is employed in order to identify the double seasonal cycles namely the intraday effect and the intraweek effect the forecast results of the suggested model are evaluated by comparing them with those of various benchmark models for the following year the empirical results indicate that the suggested model outperforms the benchmark models for both special and non special day predictions

economic assessment of the participation of wind generation in the secondary regulation market the aim of this paper is to analyze the profitability of wind technology as a potential participant in the frequency regulation specifically in the secondary regulation market the study is conducted for the spanish system using existing market rules however although this system has some peculiarities the main methodology could be applied in other systems firstly a bibliographical review of the relevant technical possibilities of this technology is carried out then a simulation study based on real data is conducted in order to evaluate the maximum possible incomes later a specific offer strategy is proposed and the income is estimated based on statistical modeling and checked by simulating its performance using the actual and forecasted productions of a wind portfolio it is concluded that under the current generation structure and regulatory framework in the spanish system the incomes obtained from the participation of wind technology would be modest however secondary regulation by wind generators might facilitate higher penetration levels of this technology in the long term with expected wind generation subsidies much reduced a greater need for regulation reserves and a possible increase in regulation prices regulation related incomes might become a sizeable fraction of the total income of wind generators

the nordic approach to market based provision of ancillary services this paper presents an overview of the markets for ancillary services which are regulated and traded differently within and across borders in the nordic countries we describe the services provided and their characteristics in terms of definition participation contracting approach and duration selection of offers and dispatch criteria further we assess the costs specify the payments and discuss cost allocation and we conclude with a policy discussion of ancillary services in the nordic countries

does family employment enhance mses performance integrating socioemotional wealth and family embeddedness perspectives abstract this paper analyzes the effect of family employment on performance in micro and small enterprises mses by combining two research perspectives that until now have been conducted separately the family embeddedness perspective of entrepreneurship aldrich and cliff 2003 and the socioemotional wealth sew approach to family business gomez mejia et al 2007 our integrated perspective allows us to highlight how the nature of the employment relationships in mses enhances the benefits derived from the socioemotional endowment associated with family labor and reduces the opportunity costs of employing relatives moreover we assert that this relationship is moderated by specific family characteristics that determine the firm s ability to preserve the sew while at the same time pursuing financial goals our results provide partial support to the enhancing role of family labour on mses performance employing family members increases sales but decreases profitability as measured by roa this effect also results in improved performance for women led firms and for firms that have received family funding but impairs mses performance when the business is the main source of the owner s household income

investment firm value and risk for a system operator balancing energy grids abstract with the liberalization of energy markets integrated energy companies have separated into entities that specialize in production and or transmission of energy transmission of energy requires balancing the grid to guarantee system security which is performed by the independent system operator so when the so faces stochastic demand grid balancing has sizeable consequences on current and future profits and hence on firm value and firm risk we explore these value and risk consequences with and without an investment option to expand transmission capacity we show that firm value consists of the value of the transmission capacity in place plus the value of a short put and a short call option that are the result of the so s balancing actions firm risk without investment option is non linear and determined by the short option positions it is decreasing with increasing energy demand the existence of an option to expand transmission capacity increases firm value and firm risk

price volatility in commodity markets with restricted participation abstract in commodity markets price volatility may rise significantly if the product granularity increases to gain insights into the underlying drivers we analyze price volatility based on the example of german electricity markets we develop a theoretical model to reproduce the price formation in the day ahead and intraday auction which are sequential short term electricity markets with 60 minute and 15 minute products as cross border trade is allowed in the day ahead but not in the intraday auction the model accounts for the impact of restricted market participation the theoretical model is then transferred into an empirical analysis to first validate the modeling approach and second to comparatively assess the impact of increasing product granularity and restricted market participation the empirical results indicate that the disproportional rise in quarter hourly price volatility is mainly triggered by limited market participation and not only by the high volatility of renewable supply and demand since restricted market participation refers to a lack of market coupling we derive a proxy for efficiency losses ranging from eur 55 million to eur 108 million that may be reduced if markets are coupled

the market value of variable renewables the effect of solar wind power variability on their relative price this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the market value of variable renewable energy vre the inherent variability of wind speeds and solar radiation affects the price that vre generators receive on the market market value during windy and sunny times the additional electricity supply reduces the prices because the drop is larger with more installed capacity the market value of vre falls with higher penetration rate this study aims to develop a better understanding on how the market value with penetration and how policies and prices affect the market value quantitative evidence is derived from a review of published studies regression analysis of market data and the calibrated model of the european electricity market emma we find the value of wind power to fall from 110 of the average power price to 50 80 as wind penetration increases from zero to 30 of total electricity consumption for solar power similarly low value levels are reached already at 15 penetration hence competitive large scale renewable deployment will be more difficult to accomplish than as many anticipate

economic assessment of virtual power plants in the german energy market a scenario based and model supported analysis abstract the energy transition energiewende in germany will result in a substantial transformation of the energy supply system virtual power plants are expected to be important components of the new intelligent energy infrastructure they aggregate beside different types of distributed generation units also active consumers and storage technologies in order to integrate these in a profit maximising system stabilising and sustainable way the assessment of the economic performance of virtual power plants requires a scenario based and model supported analysis in this relation future energy market conditions are simulated using the scenario methodology starting from the year 2015 three scenarios have been identified that illustrate alternative energy developments in germany by 2030 based on these scenarios the additional revenues potential of the modeled virtual power plant is identified when compared to an independent and non market oriented operation mode of distributed energy resources according to the model results revenues of the vpp can increase by 11 up to 30 in the analyzed scenarios in 2030 due to the market oriented operation mode nevertheless the amount and composition vary depending on technology specific subsidies temporary nature of power demand and price structures in the energy market fluctuating renewable energies are expected to benefit from the market oriented operation mode in the virtual power plant especially through the eeg direct marketing the selective and regulated shutdown of renewable energies in times of negative electricity prices may lead to further cost savings the utilization of temporary price fluctuations in the spot market and the demand oriented provision of control power offer high additional revenue potential for flexible controllable technologies such as battery storage biomethane as well as combined heat and power units finally the determination of the long term profitability of a virtual power plant still requires a full scale cost benefit analysis for this holistic approach the model results provide a reliable scientific basis

wind storage interconnection and the cost of electricity generation abstract we evaluate how increasing wind generation affects wholesale electricity prices balancing payments and the cost of subsidies using the irish single electricity market sem as a test system with hourly data from 1 january 2008 to 28 august 2012 we model the spot market using a system of seemingly unrelated regressions sur where the regressions are the 24 hours of the day wind has a negative impact on the system marginal price with every mwh increase in wind generation equal to about 0 2 of the average wind generation in our sample leading to a decrease of the system marginal price of 0 018 mwh or about 0 3 of its average value we use time series models to analyse the balancing market and show that wind generation increases balancing payments as do the forecast errors of demand and wind every mwh of additional wind generation is associated with an increase in constraint payments of 3 2 or about 0 01 lack of storage increases the impact of wind on balancing payments whereas the lack of interconnection has no effect overall wind decreases costs through its effect on the electricity price more than it increases constraint payments even when storage is on outage the effect of wind remains positive after including the cost of subsidies given to wind generation

factors determining energy consumption evidence from indonesia malaysia and thailand abstract the aim of this study is to verify empirically the impact of various factors on energy consumption in three asean countries namely indonesia malaysia and thailand over the period 1980 to 2012 after using sundry appropriate diagnostic tests for checking time series data the method of least square as an analytical technique is used for parameters estimation the findings validate that fdi inflows economic growth trade openness and human development index have positive and statistically significant impacts on energy consumption the other variable urbanization has positive and statistically significant impacts on energy consumption for thailand and indonesia only while the empirical results reveals that population growth rate has a positive and statistically significant relationship with energy consumption only in the case of malaysia so in the light of determinations of the study the policy implication is that energy policy needs to be orientated in favor of expanding the supply of energy to reach an enhanced degree of sustainable economic growth and development

harmonization of the european balancing power auction a game theoretical and empirical investigation abstract the shift towards renewable energies is accompanied by great volatility on the supply side demanding european wide instead of national balancing services for the integrated european procurement of balancing reserves the european commission proposes a multi attributive auction mechanism which is very similar to the current german auction the key difference however is a switch from pay as bid to uniform pricing we develop a game theoretical model of the current german and the future european balancing market design both market designs have desirable economic properties in their one shot version i e an efficient auction outcome and competitive prices we show that a switch to uniform pricing does not induce bidders to report their true costs in their bids but leads to underbidding we contrast the equilibrium outcomes with german market data and find a substantial discrepancy i e non competitive prices we provide a game theoretical grounded explanation that is based on the regular repetition of the auction combined with the invariant supplier side

when renewable portfolio standards meet cap and trade regulations in the electricity sector market interactions profits implications and policy redundancy emission trading programs c t and renewable portfolio standards rps are two common tools used by policymakers to control ghg emissions in the energy and other energy intensive sectors little is known however as to the policy implications resulting from these concurrent regulations especially given that their underlying policy goals and regulatory schemes are distinct this paper applies both an analytical model and a computational model to examine the short run implications of market interactions and policy redundancy the analytical model is used to generate contestable hypotheses while the numerical model is applied to consider more realistic market conditions we have two central findings first lowering the co2 c t cap might penalize renewable units and increasing the rps level could sometimes benefit coal and oil and make natural gas units worse off second making one policy more stringent would weaken the market incentive which the other policy relies upon to attain its intended policy target

agent based analysis of the impact of the imbalance pricing mechanism on market behavior in electricity balancing markets abstract the imbalance pricing mechanism is an important design variable within european type electricity balancing markets that determines the incentives given to so called balance responsible parties brps to balance their electricity production and consumption portfolio to analyze the impact of alternative imbalance pricing mechanisms on balancing market performance an agent based model has been built in which the brps are the agents that decide autonomously in each round on their balancing strategy based on results in past rounds six alternative mechanisms are analyzed it is concluded that aiming for a small long position is generally the preferable brp strategy different imbalance pricing mechanisms lead to comparable system imbalances but single pricing results in the lowest imbalance costs for the brps and for the market as a whole

collateral effects of liberalisation metering losses load profiles and cost settlement in spain s electricity system european energy markets have undergone a major transformation as they have advanced towards market liberalisation and it is vital that the details of these developments be carefully examined the success of liberalisation is based on smart regulation which has been capable of providing solutions to unforeseen events in the process our paper seeks to contribute to existing understanding of the unexpected and collateral effects of the liberalisation process in the power system by examining a natural experiment that occurred in spain in 2009 in that year the electricity supply by distribution system operators disappeared this change in retail market competition as we demonstrate in this paper has had an unexpected effect in terms of the system s balancing requirements we undertake a rigorous assessment of the economic consequences of this policy change for the whole system in terms of its impact on final electricity prices

risk assessment of virtual power plants offering in energy and reserve markets distributed energy resources ders can be integrated into a single entity namely virtual power plant vpp the integration enables them to participate in competitive wholesale electricity markets according to the different types of uncertainty faced by different ders this integration can also act as a risk hedging mechanism providing a surplus profit in this paper using a two stage stochastic programming approach risk averse optimal offering model for a vpp trading in a joint market of energy and spinning reserve service is presented the conditional value at risk cvar is used to control the risk of profit variability uncertainties involved in generation of renewables consumption of loads calls for reserve service as well as prices in the day ahead market the spinning reserve market rm and the balancing real time market bm are taken into consideration this paper assesses how total and surplus profits of vpp are affected by risk aversion participation in the rm and the pricing system in the bm for this purpose the role of the integration and the trends of energy and reserve transactions under both single and dual pricing systems in the bm are addressed in detail through a numerical study

the pervasive effects of family on entrepreneurship toward a family embeddedness perspective families and businesses have often been treated as naturally separate institutions whereas we argue that they are inextricably intertwined long term changes in family composition and in the roles and relations of family members have produced families in north america that are growing smaller and losing many of their previous role relationships such transformations in the institution of the family have implications for the emergence of new business opportunities opportunity recognition business start up decisions and the resource mobilization process we suggest that entrepreneurship scholars would benefit from a family embeddedness perspective on new venture creation d 2003 elsevier science inc all rights reserved

balancing energy strategies in electricity portfolio management traditional management of electricity portfolios is focused on the day ahead market and futures of longer maturity within limits market participants can however also resort to the balancing energy market to close their positions in this paper we determine strategic positions in the balancing energy market and identify corresponding economic incentives in an analysis of the german balancing energy demand we find that those strategies allow an economically optimal starting point for real time balancing and create a marketplace for flexible capacity that is more open than alternative marketplaces the strategies we proffer in this paper we believe will contribute to an effective functioning of the electricity market

impacts of variable renewable energy on wholesale markets and generating assets in the united states a review of expectations and evidence abstract we synthesize available literature data and analysis on the degree to which growth in variable renewable energy vre has impacted or might in the future impact bulk power system assets pricing and costs in the united states most studies of future scenarios indicate that vre reduces wholesale energy prices and capacity factors of thermal generators traditional baseload generators are more exposed to these changing market conditions than low capital cost and more flexible intermediate and peak load generators from analysis of historical data we find that vre is already influencing the bulk power market through changes in temporal and geographic patterns areas with higher levels of vre the most significant observed impacts have concentrated in areas with significant vre and or nuclear generation along with limited transmission with negative pricing also often occurring during periods with lower system wide load so far however vre has had a relatively modest impact on historical average annual wholesale prices across entire market regions at least in comparison to other drivers the reduction of natural gas prices is the primary contributor to the decline in wholesale prices since 2008 similarly vre impacts on thermal plant retirements have been limited and there is little relationship between the location of recent retirements and vre penetration levels although impacts on wholesale prices have been modest so far impacts of vre on the electricity market will be more significant under higher vre penetrations

long run power storage requirements for high shares of renewables review and a new model abstract the purpose of this article is twofold first we review model based analyses that explore the role of power storage in energy systems with high shares of variable renewables second we introduce a new model that is specifically designed for exploring long term storage requirements the literature survey focuses on recent contributions in the peer reviewed energy economics and engineering literature we compare key characteristics of the different models provide an overview of model applications and summarize key findings on power storage requirements we also evaluate which system values of storage are covered by respective model analyses based on the literature survey we identify common findings and key model features required for a sound assessment of future storage requirements in order to raise complementary insights we introduce dieter a new dispatch and investment model the model contributes to the literature by capturing multiple system values of power storage related to arbitrage capacity and reserve provision further the model is designed as an open source tool that can be freely used and modified results of a first application of the new model are presented in a companion paper

short term electricity trading for system balancing an empirical analysis of the role of intraday trading in balancing germany s electricity system abstract previous studies have noted that unexpectedly germany s dramatic expansion of wind and solar energy coincided with a reduction of short term balancing reserves this observation has been dubbed the german balancing paradox this paper provides further and updated evidence since 2011 wind and solar energy have nearly doubled while both reserve requirements and reserve use have declined by 50 the paper quantitatively explores one reason for reduced balancing needs increased and improved short term wholesale electricity trading on the intraday market trading is now commonly done around the clock and based on quarter hour rather than full hour contracts the shift to quarter hourly products alone explains a decrease in balancing energy by 17 there is also strong evidence that market parties respond efficiently to imbalance charges suggesting that incentive based approaches to electricity balancing work

a theoretical analysis of procurement auctions for tertiary control in germany as far as energy policy is concerned the design of the regulatory framework for energy transmission and distribution is a key issue consequently also the embodiment of balancing power markets drives mainly the effectiveness of political implications for the energy sector initially tertiary control in germany was solely offered by transmission system operators of the respective power control areas and their associated power plant the recast of the energy industry act of 2005 led in last consequence to a common procurement auction for the supply of tertiary control which starts on december 1 2006 admittedly the reform has fallen short of expectations so far first concerning the intensification of market entry of tertiary control providers as well as the desired decline of the price level hence this article examines the effects of the changeover on observable demand charges in order to identify attributes of the common procurement auction for tertiary control hampering market entry of providers giving stimuli to collusion and strategic behavior reducing intensity of competition and encouraging an upswing of prices we analyze the design under an auction theoretical approach and deduce empirically whether structural components of the auction design have to be touched up again

domestic and international influences on green taxation economists have made a strong case for the relative efficiency of market based mechanisms for environmental regulation such as cap and trade and green taxes yet the spread of these forms has been limited and traditional command and control regulation still predominates the authors explain geographical and temporal variation in green tax burdens by considering their domestic and international determinants modeling international influences using spatial lags hypotheses are tested using panel data on organisation for economic co operation and development member states from 1995 to 2004 at the domestic level the authors show that green tax burdens are influenced by the left right and environmental positions of legislative medians and the power of the energy producing sector among other factors the authors also show that ideas about policy diffuse through international networks generated by trade and environmental intergovernmental organizations but they do not find compelling evidence for intern

failure or voluntary exit reassessing the female underperformance hypothesis abstract we reevaluate the female underperformance hypothesis by challenging the assumption that female owned ventures are more likely to fail instead of equating exit with failure we draw on exit literature and feminist theories to argue that female entrepreneurs are actually more likely than males to exit voluntarily we argue for further gender differences by using an even more fine grained conceptualization of entrepreneurial exit failure exit for personal reasons and exit for other professional financial opportunities post hoc analyses also point to within gender heterogeneity depending on family status a sample probe of 219 spanish entrepreneurs who had exited their business supports our overall reasoning

balancing power and variable renewables three links abstract balancing power is used to quickly restore the supply demand balance in power systems the need for this tends to be increased by the use of variable renewable energy sources vre such as wind and solar power this paper reviews three channels through which vre and balancing systems interact the impact of vre forecast errors on balancing reserve requirements the supply of balancing services by vre generators and the incentives to improve forecasting provided by imbalance charges the paper reviews the literature provides stylized facts from german market data and suggests policy options surprisingly while german wind and solar capacity has tripled since 2008 balancing reserves have been reduced by 15 and costs by 50

a review of balancing costs in italy before and after res introduction abstract the massive introduction of res in electricity markets is recognized to have induced a merit order effect on wholesale prices while day ahead prices are likely to decline as res e production increases the effects on balancing market sessions are more ambiguous taking into account the northern italian zone characterized by a high solar pv and hydro penetration we provide empirical evidence that balancing quantities decreased while costs increased between two samples associated with low 2006 08 and high 2013 15 res levels we estimate balancing costs for different technologies and compare their dynamics across specific hours we find evidence of increasing balancing prices in particular market conditions that we interpret as a signal of strategic use of real time sessions by conventional producers prone to the merit order effect in the day ahead market we compare our results to those obtained in the german market where on the contrary balancing costs have decreased and postulate that the different market designs may explain these results our findings suggest that the italian policy makers should carefully monitor all trading sessions especially those close to real time to avoid the exercise of market power by few operators allowed to guarantee system security and additionally to promptly adopt a capacity market

econometric modeling of regional electricity spot prices in the australian market abstract wholesale electricity markets are increasingly integrated via high voltage interconnectors and inter regional trade in electricity is growing to model this we consider a spatial equilibrium model of price formation where constraints on inter regional flows result in three distinct equilibria in prices we use this to motivate an econometric model for the distribution of observed electricity spot prices that captures many of their unique empirical characteristics the econometric model features supply and inter regional trade cost functions which are estimated using bayesian monotonic regression smoothing methodology a copula multivariate time series model is employed to capture additional dependence both cross sectional and serial in regional prices the marginal distributions are nonparametric with means given by the regression means the model has the advantage of preserving the heavy right hand tail in the predictive densities of price we fit the model to half hourly spot price data in the five interconnected regions of the australian national electricity market the fitted model is then used to measure how both supply and price shocks in one region are transmitted to the distribution of prices in all regions in subsequent periods finally to validate our econometric model we show that prices forecast using the proposed model compares favorably with those from some benchmark alternatives

congestion management rules and trading strategies in the spanish electricity market abstract this paper analyses the economic incentives embodied in the rules governing the resolution of transmission constraints in the spanish wholesale electricity market and the way these incentives may have influenced on the trading behaviour of both the generators and the demand side the evidence obtained is consistent with them responding to these incentives in particular buyers would respond to the way congestion costs are billed to them by abandoning the daily market in favour of the intraday market as far as possible additionally some strategic generators may have been prompted the system operator to require them to inject electricity into the system to solve network congestions finally these results may contribute to shed light on what should be expected of the reform in the aforementioned rules

individual values and household finances we create individual cultural values measures for households and show that this is an important determinant of their financial behaviour to date personal cultural values have only been indirectly measured through religion and trust but these are at best an approximation of true cultural values applying a holistic framework from the world values survey wvs we create individual measures of cultural values and show that the self expression values of this framework are positively associated with households financial decisions examining the individual cultural values that make up the wvs model we further show that happiness trust and playing an active role in society are individually important determinants of household financial decision making our study shows that cultural values can be brought from a generalized national level to the individual level in order to improve our understanding of household financial decision making

effects of political institutions on air quality we empirically test existing theories on the provision of public goods in particular air quality using data on sulfur dioxide so2 concentrations from the global environment monitoring projects for 107 cities in 42 countries from 1971 to 1996 the results are as follows first we provide additional support for the claim that the degree of democracy has an independent positive effect on air quality second we find that among democracies presidential systems are more conducive to air quality than parliamentary ones third in testing competing claims about the effect of interest groups on public goods provision in democracies we establish that labor union strength contributes to lower environmental quality whereas the strength of green parties has the opposite effect

a missing link in family firms internationalization research family structures hennart majocchi and forlani propose and validate a new explanation of family firms internationalization heterogeneity shedding light on the role of a family firm s global niche business model this type of family firm can avoid the dominant internationalization problems usually depicted in the literature on family firms internationalization starting from the same diagnosis on extant research we explore another perspective to explain this heterogeneity the structure of the family institution we examine the relationships of family structures developed by emmanuel todd in social anthropology to family firms internationalization we explain how todd s typology of family structures can influence the new mechanisms proposed by hennart and colleagues for family firms in europe with a global niche business internationalization finally using these family structures we also reexamine two analyses on family firms internationalization therefore we introduce a new perspective for research on family firms internationalization that is based on context and has critical importance for understanding family firms strategies this new perspective has significance for international business research on family firms

relief for the environment the importance of an increasingly unimportant industrial sector deindustrialization stagnant real incomes of production workers and increasing inequality are latter day features of many economies it is common to assume that such developments pressure policymakers to relax environmental standards however when heavily polluting industries become less important economically their political importance also tends to diminish consequently a regulator may increase the stringency of environmental policies like some other studies we find that declining industrial employment translates into stricter environmental standards in contrast to previous studies but consistent with our argument we find that greater income inequality is associated with policies that promote a cleaner environment jel q58 p16 j31 c23

wind balancing costs in a power system with high wind penetration evidence from portugal abstract the growth of intermittent renewable power generation has been drawing attention to the design of balancing markets portugal is an interesting case study because wind generation already accounts for a high fraction of demand 23 in 2012 2016 but still there are no economic incentives for efficient wind forecasting wind balancing costs are passed to end consumers we analyze the evolution of the balancing market from 2012 to 2016 using actual market data we find wind balancing costs around 2 euros per mwh of generated energy one main reason for these low costs is the existence of a robust transmission grid which allows for the compensation of positive with negative wind imbalances across the system nevertheless the results suggest that final consumers could save several million euros per year if wind generators were made responsible for the economic cost of their imbalances in line with other european markets

forecasting day ahead electricity load using a multiple equation time series approach the quality of short term electricity load forecasting is crucial to the operation and trading activities of market participants in an electricity market in this paper it is shown that a multiple equation time series model which is estimated by repeated application of ordinary least squares has the potential to match or even outperform more complex nonlinear and nonparametric forecasting models the key ingredient of the success of this simple model is the effective use of lagged information by allowing for interaction between seasonal patterns and intra day dependencies although the model is built using data for the queensland region of australia the method is completely generic and applicable to any load forecasting problem the model s forecasting ability is assessed by means of the mean absolute percentage error mape for day ahead forecast the mape returned by the model over a period of 11 years is an impressive 1 36 the forecast accuracy of the model is compared with a number of benchmarks including three popular alternatives and one industrial standard reported by the australia energy market operator aemo the performance of the model developed in this paper is superior to all benchmarks and outperforms the aemo forecasts by about a third in terms of the mape criterion

on economic inefficiency of european inter tso compensation mechanism abstract economic inefficiency of european inter transmission system operator itc mechanism is demonstrated by means of statistical analysis of a time series of natural quantities production consumption and exchange of energy as well as by devising a simple model that shows that the current system misallocates relevant costs between transmission system operators tsos involved then the reasons for this apparent inefficiency are discussed it is concluded that under existing eu policy rules in electricity sector it is not possible to construct a compensation mechanism that would perform a correct reallocation of external costs incurred by energy transits among interconnected networks operated by different tsos then simple microeconomic models that exhibit a correct compensation of costs with rules of the game set differently than by today s eu regulatory framework are presented

income inequality and co2 emissions in the g7 1870 2014 evidence from non parametric modelling abstract we examine whether income inequality effected carbon emissions in what are now the world s wealthiest countries over the period 1870 2014 employing a non parametric panel estimation method with cross sectional and time varying coefficients we find that the relationship between income inequality and co2 emissions is highly non linear in terms of signs and significance the nonparametric coefficient function for income inequality is found to vary over the period 1870 2014 income inequality exhibits a significant positive effect from 1870 to 1880 and a significant negative impact from 1950 to 2000 on co2 emissions we also find that for extended periods between 1881 and 1949 and between 2000 and 2014 there is no significant relationship between the two variables

is the troika bad for the environment an analysis of eu countries environmental performance in times of economic downturn and austerity memoranda abstract in this paper we examine the effect of the current economic crisis on the environmental performance of the eu countries by employing hierarchical linear multilevel hlm modeling we find that for the period 2000 2015 a drop in the national gdp a recession effect as well as endorsing a memorandum of understanding mou for receiving a imf eu ecb financial rescue package a troika effect have non significant to positive impacts on a number of national environmental quality and policy indicators over and above other economic political and governance predictors for eurozone and non eurozone countries alike nevertheless this changes drastically if we examine these two factors interaction experiencing a recession while being a recipient of a troika sponsored rescue package has detrimental effects on an eu country s national environment

the impact of renewable energy forecast errors on imbalance volumes and electricity spot prices abstract this paper contributes to the general consideration of whether a policy of incentivising system operators to improve the quality and market availability of forecasts for renewable energy outputs would be beneficial using data from the german electricity market we investigate the effect of wind and solar energy forecasts errors on imbalance volumes and subsequent spot electricity prices we use ordinary least squares regression quantile regression and autoregressive moving averages to identify these relationships using variables that have a quarter hourly data granularity the results show that higher wind and solar forecast errors increase the absolute values of imbalance volumes and that these can pass through into higher spot prices we find that wind forecast errors in germany impact spot prices more than solar forecasting errors policy incentives to improve the accuracy and availability of renewable energy forecasts by the system operators should therefore be encouraged

the second french nuclear bet following the first oil crisis france launched the world s largest ever nuclear energy program commissioning 58 new reactors these reactors are now reaching 40 years of age the end of their technological lifetime this places france at an energy policy crossroads should the reactors be retrofitted or should they be decommissioned the cost optimal decision depends on several factors going forward in particular the expected costs of nuclear energy production electricity demand levels and carbon prices all of which are subject to significant uncertainty to deal with these uncertainties we apply the robust decision making framework to determine which reactors should be retrofitted we build an investment and dispatch optimization model calibrated for france then we use it to study 27 retrofit strategies for all combinations of uncertain parameters with nearly 8000 runs our analysis indicates that robust strategies involve the early closure of 10 to 20 reactors while extending the life of all other reactors these strategies provide a hedge against the risks of unexpected increases in retrofit costs low demand and low carbon prices our work also highlights the vulnerabilities of the official french government scenarios and complements them by suggesting new robust strategies these results provide a timely contribution to the current debate on the lifetime extension of nuclear plants in france

quality over quantity reexamining the link between entrepreneurship and job creation although much has been written about the quantity of jobs created by entrepreneurs scholars have yet to examine the quality of these jobs in this article the authors begin to address this important issue by examining nearly 5 000 businesses that began operations in 2004 they investigate the extent to which nascent employers provide what many think of as quality jobs those offering health care coverage and a retirement plan the authors find that because of small scale constrained resources and protection from institutional pressures start up companies do not provide their employees with either of these proxies for job quality and their likelihood of offering health or retirement benefits increases only marginally over their first six years of operation the finding that entrepreneurs impressive record of job creation is not matched by a similarly impressive outcome with respect to job quality challenges policymakers to ensure that entrepreneurs are encouraged to create quality employment opportunities in the course of creating new businesses abstract from author

the political drivers of renewable energies policies this paper empirically analyzes how political factors affect the deployment of renewable energy re sources and compares their explanatory power to that of other economic energy and environmental drivers that have received greater attention in the literature so far the sample encompasses the eu countries bound to attain the target of 20 share of gross final energy consumption by 2020 the panel data analysis shows that lobbying by the manufacturing industry negatively affects re deployment whereas standard measures of government quality show a positive effect furthermore left wing parties promote the deployment of re more than right wing parties

the role of family ownership in international entrepreneurship exploring nonlinear effects empirical research on international entrepreneurship is growing but results on the role of family ownership in this phenomenon are inconsistent we believe these inconsistencies owe to prior researchers having not yet investigated nonlinear relationships drawing on opposing perspectives of stewardship and stagnation we explore potential benefits and drawbacks of family ownership for international entrepreneurship and explore nonlinear relationships among these two variables using a sample of 1 035 us family businesses and applying ordinal regression analysis we find an inverted u shaped relationship between family ownership and international entrepreneurship international entrepreneurship is maximized when family ownership stands at moderate levels we discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and indicate avenues for future research

the environment left wing political orientation and ecological economics the objectives of this commentary are twofold the first is to examine the relationship between a party s position within the left right political spectrum and its stance on environmental issues as stated in party manifestos the second is to examine the relationship between individuals ideological orientation and pro environmental beliefs attitudes and self reported behavior equality distributional concerns and market skepticism are typically regarded as defining factors of left wing political orientation our results suggest that left wing parties and individuals are also more pro environmental than their right wing counterparts ecological economics similarly embraces sustainability efficient resource allocation and equitable distribution and is skeptical towards the ability of unregulated markets to achieve these objectives the hypothesis is put forward that ecological economics is more likely to be supported by left wing parties and individuals

short term load forecasting methods an evaluation based on european data this paper uses intraday electricity demand data from ten european countries as the basis of an empirical comparison of univariate methods for prediction up to a day ahead a notable feature of the time series is the presence of both an in traweek and an intraday seasonal cycle the forecasting methods considered in the study include arima modeling periodic ar modeling an extension for double seasonality of holt winters exponential smoothing a recently proposed alternative exponential smoothing formulation and a method based on the principal component analysis pca of the daily demand profiles our results show a similar ranking of methods across the 10 load series the results were disappointing for the new alternative exponential smoothing method and for the periodic ar model the arima and pca methods performed well but the method that consistently performed the best was the double seasonal holt winters exponential smoothing method

spot and derivative pricing in the eex power market using spot and futures price data from the german eex power market we test the adequacy of various one factor and two factor models for electricity spot prices the models are compared along two different dimensions 1 we assess their ability to explain the major data characteristics and 2 the forecasting accuracy for expected future spot prices is analyzed we find that the regime switching models clearly outperform its competitors in almost all respects the best results are obtained using a two regime model with a gaussian distribution in the spike regime furthermore for short and medium term periods our results underpin the frequently stated hypothesis that electricity futures quotes are consistently greater than the expected future spot a situation which is denoted as contango

short run electricity load forecasting with combinations of stationary wavelet transforms short term forecasting of electricity load is an essential issue for the management of power systems and for energy trading specific modeling approaches are needed given the strong seasonality and volatility in load data in this paper we investigate the benefit of combining stationary wavelet transforms to produce one day ahead forecasts of half hourly electric load in france first we assess the advantage of decomposing the aggregate load into several subseries with a wavelet transform each component is predicted separately and aggregated to get the final forecast one innovation of this paper is to propose several approaches to deal with the boundary problem which is particularly detrimental in electricity load forecasting second we examine the benefit of combining forecasts over individual models an extensive out of sample evaluation shows that a careful treatment of the border effect is required in the multiresolution analysis combinations including the wavelet predictions provide the most accurate forecasts this result is valid with several assumptions about the forecast error in temperature and for different types of hours peak normal off peak different days of the week and various forecasting periods

corporatism as an impediment to ecological sustenance the case of finnish waste management abstract this study set out to improve the capacity of finnish policy makers to design and implement long term waste management policies since policy makers must frequently act on incomplete information and process the information they receive through mental models that can lead to inefficient or myopic choices the methodological approach was to analyze the structure substance and institutional context of the mental models with which key policy makers in finnish waste management rationalize their long term decisions individual scenarios were analyzed for inconsistencies that indicate how institutions constrain policy decisions and what institutional changes might enable policy makers to better prepare for the long term future to map the cognitive models that underlie waste management policies interviews were conducted in 1992 with 24 decision makers and experts on finnish waste management the main finding is that the exclusion of long term ecological sustenance is a systemic built in characteristic of finnish corporatism corporatist institutions nurture environmental policy makers short sighted mental models which in turn are the rationale for the short sighted corporatist institutions the principle unifying the recommendations is the administrative and procedural separation of conflicting environmental policy interests and the simultaneous empowering of sustainable goals with appropriate institutions

on the effectiveness of the anti gaming policy between the day ahead and real time electricity markets in the netherlands in this paper we study the linkage between two related markets for electricity in the netherlands the day ahead market and the real time market the dutch regulator wants to prevent trading across these two markets and has set up a dual pricing system for this purpose in this paper we test the effectiveness of this policy by studying the ex post profitability of trading strategies spanning the two markets over various time segments our results show that profits generated by these strategies are rarely positive on average and always characterized by very large potential losses which dwarf the mean profit when the latter is positive

wind hydro or mixed renewable energy source preference for electricity products when the share of renewable energy increases abstract while the share of renewable energy especially wind power increases in the energy mix the risk of temporary energy shortage increases as well thus it is important to understand consumers preference for the renewable energy towards the continuous growing renewable energy society we use a discrete choice experiment to infer consumers preferences when the share of renewable energy increases the study results indicate that consumers are generally willing to pay extra for an increasing share of renewable energy but the renewable energy should come from a mixture of renewable energy sources we also found that consumers prefer to trade with their current supplier rather than another well known supplier this study contributes to the energy portfolio theories and the theory of energy diversification in a consumer perspective the managerial implications of this study are also discussed

trading behaviour on the continuous intraday market elbas intraday markets for electricity allow for trading of energy until shortly before the period of delivery this offers market participants a possibility to reduce their expected imbalances and to of

the effect of price regulation on energy imbalances a difference in differences design abstract providing adequate incentives to schedule energy programs accurately is a critical feature of liberalized electricity markets particularly those with large shares of intermittent renewable energy resources in this regard two main regulatory approaches are widely adopted in europe the single pricing scheme rewards or penalizes market agents according to the impact of their individual imbalances on the system imbalance the dual pricing scheme penalizes at best does not reward all individual energy imbalances this study theoretically identifies and then provides supporting empirical evidence of potential inconsistencies between market agents balancing responsibility and the economic incentives provided by these pricing rules de facto opportunities for arbitrage in sequential markets the causal effect of imbalance price regulations on the volume of the energy imbalances is investigated by exploiting a quasi experimental change in regulation in the italian power system a difference in differences design provides robust evidence that the volume of intentional imbalances significantly decreases when moving from a single to dual pricing scheme we conclude that the economic incentives of a dual pricing scheme are better aligned with a market agent s responsibility to be balanced and worth of further consideration from a policy perspective

trading wind generation from short term probabilistic forecasts of wind power due to the fluctuating nature of the wind resource a wind power producer participating in a liberalized electricity market is subject to penalties related to regulation costs accurate forecasts of wind generation are therefore paramount for reducing such penalties and thus maximizing revenue despite the fact that increasing accuracy in spot forecasts may reduce penalties this paper shows that if such forecasts are accompanied with information on their uncertainty i e in the form of predictive distributions then this can be the basis for defining advanced strategies for market participation such strategies permit to further increase revenues and thus enhance competitiveness of wind generation compared to other forms of dispatchable generation this paper formulates a general methodology for deriving optimal bidding strategies based on probabilistic forecasts of wind generation as well as on modeling of the sensitivity a wind power producer may have to regulation costs the benefits resulting from the application of these strategies are clearly demonstrated on the test case of the participation of a multi mw wind farm in the dutch electricity market over a year

the incentive to invest in thermal plants in the presence of wind generation abstract in a deregulated market the decision to add generation rests with private investors this paper evaluates how generator profits are affected by increasing wind generation using hourly historical data for the irish single electricity market we simulate new series of electricity prices representative plant bids and wind generation we calibrate the model based on the negative correlation between electricity prices and wind generation this allows us to determine that increasing wind generation induces lower profits for all baseload plants additionally it decreases profits for baseload natural gas plants more than for less flexible coal fuelled plants which might encourage investment in less flexible plants

interactions between electricity generation sources and economic activity in two nord pool systems evidence from estonia and sweden abstractthe interactions between electricity sources and industrial production in estonia and sweden are analysed based on monthly data the availability of data defines the time spans from january 2010 to september 2015 for sweden and from april 2010 to december 2014 for estonia these countries are particularly interesting to study because of their dissimilar generation mix estonia s generation mix is based on oil shale while sweden s is based on nuclear plants and hydroelectricity in short both countries energy mixes are based on endogenous natural resources the ardl model was applied allowing the long run and short run effects to be captured the results prove that economic growth is sustained by natural endogenous resources estonia should continue to improve the usage of renewable energies using fossil sources in support in order to reduce emissions and to meet international environmental commitments sweden should promote the efficient usage of various renewable sources

buffering volatility a study on the limits of germany s energy revolution squaring hourly demand and wind solar production data for germany and a number of neighbouring countries with the results of the eu s estorage project this paper studies the limits of germany s energy revolution in view of the volatility of wind and solar power in addition to pumped storage it considers double structure buffering demand management norwegian hydro dam buffering and international diversification via grid expansion if germany operated in autarchy and tried to handle the volatility of wind solar production without using stores while replacing all nuclear and fossil fuel in power production on average 61 and at the margin 94 of wind solar production would have to be wasted given the current level of other renewables to avoid any waste the wind solar market share in an autarchic solution must not be expanded to more than 30 by using norway s hydro plants the share could be expanded to 36 if norway were to build all the pumped storage plants the estorage study deems feasible germany s wind solar market share could be expanded by another 24 percentage points to about 60 which corresponds to 48 of the combined german and norwegian markets additionally expanding the market to switzerland austria and denmark and building the maximal number of pumped stores would increase the combined wind solar market share for all five countries to nearly 50 c 2017 the author s published by elsevier b v

are left wing party strength and corporatism good for the environment evidence from panel analysis of air pollution in oecd countries abstract the effect of left wing party strength and corporatism on air pollution levels in up to 21 oecd countries over the period 1980 or 1990 1999 is tested with both fixed effects and random effects estimators controlling for scale composition technique as well as aggregate time effects robust evidence is found that parliamentary green left libertarian party strength is associated with lower pollution levels the rise of ecologically oriented parties has thus had a real impact on air pollution levels traditional left wing party strength is possibly also associated with lower pollution levels but the evidence is less consistent and robust combined left wing party strength in government is possibly associated with higher pollution levels but this result is also far from robust and is practically small no evidence is found for a consistent systematic impact of corporatism on pollution levels

identifying barriers to large scale integration of variable renewable electricity into the electricity market a literature review of market design abstract for reaching the 2 c climate target the robust growth of electricity generation from variable renewable energy sources vre in the power sector is expected to continue accommodation of the power system to the variable uncertain and locational dependent outputs of vre causes integration costs integrating vre into a well functioning electricity market can minimize integration costs and drive investments in vre and complementary flexible resources however the electricity market in the european union eu as currently designed seems incapable to deliver this end this paper aims to provide a comprehensive literature review of barriers to the large scale market integration of vre in the eu electricity market design based on the set up of the eu electricity market a framework was developed to incorporate the most pertinent market integration barriers and resulting market inefficiencies this paper concludes that an overhaul is needed for the current eu electricity market to address all barriers identified firstly a discrete auction intraday market a marginal pricing balancing market a two price imbalance settlement and a nodal pricing locational marginal pricing mechanism seem more promising in limiting integration costs secondly to support business cases of vre and complementary flexible resources in the electricity market a level playing field should be established and the price cap should be lifted up to the value of lost load voll meanwhile to fit vre s market participation a higher time resolution of trading products and later gate closure time in different submarkets would be required lastly feed in support schemes currently widely used for vre investments might be inconsistent with market integration as they increase integration costs and lock vre investments in a subsidy dependent pathway to avoid such lock in further investigation of alternative capacity based support schemes is recommended

moving through the political participation hierarchy a focus on personal values this study empirically explores the determinants of political participation using data from the european social survey we investigate the relationship between political participation and personal values using the schwartz 1992 values inventory a political participation hierarchy is theorized and activities are categorized into four levels of participation none weak medium and strong based on the cost of participating and how unconventional the activity is empirical analysis points to individuals who are more open to change and more self transcendent being more likely to participate sub sample analysis contrasting east and west europe suggests that the role for personal values is more subdued in the east with respect to moving individuals from not participating to at least voting furthermore the use of a generalized ordered logit model in this study illustrates the complex nature of many of the determinants of political participation in particular we find that the influence of the maj

the community dynamics of entrepreneurship the birth of the american film industry 1895 1929 the study of entrepreneurship has traditionally focused on the founders of new organizations especially those that emerge as leaders in the creation of new industries much of this work follows what gartner 1989 called the traits approach studies of this type posit a causal link between the founding and success of new organizations and the personal attributes of the entrepreneurs however more recent research has documented the many ways in which successful entrepreneurship requires more than just the right person a multitude of factors operating at both the organizational and evironmental levels of analysis also affect the success of entrepreneurial efforts examples include technological change shane 1996 changes in sources of firm capital cable and shane 1997 changes in strategic alliances eisenhardt and schoonhoven 1996 personal networks ostgaard and birley 1996 national environments shane and kolvereid 1995 location choice stearns carter reynolds and williams 1995 and national culture shane 1992

econometric analysis of 15 minute intraday electricity prices abstract the trading activity in the german intraday electricity market has increased significantly over the last years this is partially due to an increasing share of renewable energy wind and photovoltaic which requires power generators to balance out the forecasting errors in their production we investigate the bidding behaviour in the intraday market by looking at both last prices and continuous bidding in the context of a reduced form econometric analysis a unique data set of 15 minute intraday prices and intraday updated forecasts of wind and photovoltaic has been employed price bids are explained by prior information on renewables forecasts and demand supply market specific exogenous variables we show that intraday prices adjust asymmetrically to both forecasting errors in renewables and to the volume of trades dependent on the threshold variable demand quote which reflects the expected demand covered by the planned traditional capacity in the day ahead market the location of the threshold can be used by market participants to adjust their bids accordingly given the latest updates in the wind and photovoltaic forecasting errors and the forecasts of the control area balances

the entrepreneurial orientation performance relationship in private family firms the moderating role of socioemotional wealth drawing on socioemotional wealth sew literature this paper revisits the established entrepreneurial orientation eo performance relationship in a family business context the main idea in entrepreneurship literature is that eo leads to increased firm performance we question this logic in a family business context because family related non financial goals like sew may prevent the firm to reap the fruits of their entrepreneurial efforts specifically we argue that sew engenders inefficiencies that place constraints on the realization of the benefits of entrepreneurship therefore we propose that a high level of sew preservation hinders the transmission of the family firm s eo into positive performance effects to test this hypothesis an empirical study was developed using a sample of 232 belgian private family firms robust linear regression analysis reveals that the positive effect of eo on financial performance decreases as the level of sew preservation increases

convergence in co2 emissions a spatial economic analysis with cross country interactions abstract this research analyzes the evolution of co2 emissions per capita in a sample of 141 countries during the period 1970 2014 the study develops a spatially augmented green solow model by taking into consideration technological externalities and interdependence in the process of production which ultimately implies that co2 emissions in an economy are affected by the economic characteristics in neighboring countries the empirical model predicts convergence in co2 emissions among countries which is examined by means of modern dynamic spatial panel econometric techniques the multimodal distribution of the co2 emissions is consistent with the existence of three spatial clubs the space time dynamics of the three clubs are analyzed by means of the local directional moran scatterplot and spatial panel model with heterogeneous parameters our analysis reveals the hypothesis of spatial convergence clubs is more consistent with the data than the hypothesis of conditional convergence

system friendly wind power how advanced wind turbine design can increase the economic value of electricity generated through wind power abstract previous studies find that the economic value of electricity usd mwh generated by wind power drops with increasing market share different measures can help mitigate the value drop including electricity storage flexible conventional plants expansion of transmission and demand response this study assesses another option a change in design of wind power plants advanced wind turbines that are higher and have a larger rotor compared to rated capacity lower specific rating generate electricity more constantly than classical turbines recent years have witnessed a significant shift towards such advanced technology our model based analysis for northwestern europe shows that such design can substantially increase the spot market value of generated electricity at a 30 penetration rate the value of 1 mwh of electricity generated from a fleet of advanced turbines is estimated to be 15 higher than the value of 1 mwh from classical turbines the additional value is large whether compared to wind generation costs to the value drop or to the effect of alternative measures such as electricity storage extensive sensitivity tests indicate that this finding is remarkably robust the increase in bulk power value is not the only advantage of advanced turbines additional benefits might accrue from reduced costs for power grids and balancing services to fully realize this potential power markets and support policies need to be appropriately designed and signal scarcity investors

rich enough to go renewable but too early to leave fossil energy abstract typically environmental kuznets curve ekc studies on energy concentrate on the emissions produced from energy production or consumption and neglect the aspect of exhaustion of a natural resource which is an irreversible result against any definition of sustainability and intergenerational equity this paper investigates whether there is an environmental kuznets curve for renewable energy whether there should be one and if there is what it should stand for for this reason the paper employs balanced panel data for 33 european member and candidate state countries that produce crude oil natural gas coal and renewable energy for the years 1990 2010 to investigate the relationship between their scale of economic activity fossil energy production and the production of renewable energy results from random effects models together with arellano bond estimator models identify the u shape for the environmental kuznets curve only for renewable energy and coal production a theoretical justification on the mechanisms possibly driving the environmental kuznets curve for renewable energy are also discussed