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As the detrimental effects of consuming nonrenewable energy gain the attention of the United States populace, policymakers have shifted their attention to implementing policies that support the development of solar photovoltaic markets. We use the OLS estimator to determine which policy incentives are more effective at increasing the electricity generated from solar photovoltaic at the state level. Policy incentives analyzed in this paper include subsidies, tax incentives, renewable portfolio standards, solar carveouts, interconnection standards, and power purchase agreements. Additionally, we utilize interaction terms to determine if a state's policy portfolio is more effective when the portfolio contains policies targeted toward both creating and expanding the market, as opposed to only creating or expanding the market. The results suggest that renewable portfolio standards are the most effective policy incentives, and policy portfolios including both market creation and expansion policies can be more effective at developing solar photovoltaic markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This research examines nuclear energy policy across three states in the United States (US) – Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Texas – from 1990 to 2010. Therefore, the nuclear energy crisis at Fukushima in Japan March 2011 is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, the fundamental conclusions of this research remain valid, as the impact of Fukushima is not yet known and in addition the US has experienced its own crisis in Three Mile Island, which has shaped its own nuclear industry to an extent already. Interviews are at the core of the research methodology employed, which is similar to other in-depth studies on nuclear new build. The aim of this paper is to identify and clarify those aspects of the legal, economic, and political requirements of the US that affect prospects for nuclear new build but which, so far, have not been well understood by experts. The research provides these new insights through a unique comparison of US states which have deregulated, regulated and ‘hybrid’ electricity markets. It is evident that law can play a central role in the nuclear energy sector, and the role of state-driven policy in the nuclear energy sector is also demonstrated. Further, the methodology identifies key assumptions within the nuclear sector in the US that are contested, and delivers lessons on how these contested issues may be resolved. The paper adds to the literature in public administration, legal development and nuclear energy policy, and in particular nuclear new build. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Dealing with Renewable Energy Resources (RERs) requires sophisticated planning and operation scheduling along with state of art technologies. Among many possible ways for handling RERs, Demand Response (DR) is investigated in the current review. Because of every other year modifications in DR definition and classification announced by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the latest DR definition and classification are scrutinized in the present work. Moreover, a complete benefit and cost assessment of DR is added in the paper. Measurement and evolution methods along with the effects of DR in electricity prices are discussed. Next comes DR literature review of the recent papers majorly published after 2008. Eventually, successful DR implementations, around the world, are analyzed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Aggregation and cooperation among peers will expand beyond prosumers in microgrids. • Growth in IoT and metering infrastructure is empowering end-use consumers. • Methodology allows aggregated consumers to schedule load and share energy. • Application demonstrates a significant cost reduction while assuring fairness. • Offers a novel cost-sharing strategy guided by cost minimization and Nash bargaining. End-use consumers (peers) are being empowered to aggregate for direct demand-side participation through load scheduling and energy sharing. This is the result of the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled loads, availability of advanced metering infrastructure, and the move towards real-time (RT) pricing of electricity. Peer-to-peer (P2P) cooperation has received significant interest in recent years, though the focus of this growing body of research is on modeling prosumer behavior in microgrids. Hence, there is a need for new methodologies to examine empowerment of all end-use consumers (not limited to prosumers) to form aggregations and develop fair rules of cooperation to reduce cost. This paper offers an optimization based methodology to address the above need for power systems. It minimizes the total cost and considers fairness using a Nash bargaining approach. Since cost and fairness are often in conflict, trade-off strategies are also presented. The model to asses fairness is nonlinear. Hence, it is transformed into a second order cone program (SOCP) and solved using GUROBI software version 7.5.2. The methodology is implemented on a sample 5-bus network, built using price and demand data from one of the load zones of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (PJM) power network in the United States. It is shown that two aggregations of peers participating in the sample network can reduce their total cost by 14.17% and 22.7%, while maintaining fairness. Concluding remarks highlight some of the limitations of the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The economic viability of new energy technologies is held as a central tenet to their future deployment; conventional wisdom posits economically rational decision-makers will readily invest in proven low-risk and affordable technologies. But what happens when this is not true. This paper examines the non-financial barriers facing economically viable Combined Heat and Power (CHP) projects. CHP is a mature and lower carbon technology that efficiently uses waste heat from thermal electricity generation; CHP can also provide flexibility services to help integrate variable renewable resources. CHP is low risk and many industrialized countries, particularly those in colder climates in Northern Europe and Russia, generate as much as 50% of their electricity and heat needs from CHP, but United States deployment remains low and investment hurdle rates high. While lower U.S. energy costs make some projects un-economic, many economically-viable CHP projects are stalled or killed by non-financial barriers. To better understand why financially viable CHP projects are not getting built, developers, owners and operators, regulators, and other stakeholders of this technology were interviewed and three major barriers emerged a) the business model of the electrical utility b) negative subjective impressions and c) challenges in allocating the risks and benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Electricity systems models are software tools used to manage electricity demand and the electricity systems, to trade electricity and for generation expansion planning purposes. Various portfolios and scenarios are modelled in order to compare the effects of decision making in policy and on business development plans in electricity systems so as to best advise governments and industry on the least cost economic and environmental approach to electricity supply, while maintaining a secure supply of sufficient quality electricity. The modelling techniques developed to study vertically integrated state monopolies are now applied in liberalised markets where the issues and constraints are more complex. This paper reviews the changing role of electricity systems modelling in a strategic manner, focussing on the modelling response to key developments, the move away from monopoly towards liberalised market regimes and the increasing complexity brought about by policy targets for renewable energy and emissions. The paper provides an overview of electricity systems modelling techniques, discusses a number of key proprietary electricity systems models used in the USA and Europe and provides an information resource to the electricity analyst not currently readily available in the literature on the choice of model to investigate different aspects of the electricity system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the electricity reforms in California and in England and Wales. In both cases, a centralised spot market played a major role, and both markets have now been abolished. This paper argues that their disappearance is not evidence that future electricity restructuring should avoid the use of spot markets. Instead, the problems in England and Wales were largely due to market power. In California, problems arising from market power and a tightening demand-supply balance were turned into a disaster because the spot market had not been backed up by hedging contracts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Renewable-based energy systems have the potential to vastly increase the use of land devoted to energy, thus drastically changing landscapes and habitats, since conventional, fossil-based energy systems use a very small proportion of earth's land surface. Land use affects ecosystems, biodiversity, and geochemical cycles. It also affects people's well-being due to effects on views, noise, recreation, and quality of life. This means strong and transparent metrics to assess land use for energy systems are needed. This review considers some of the most influential papers and metrics in this category, namely ecological footprint, land use intensity and power density, attempting to make them transparent in terms of data used and calculations performed. The literature frequently relies heavily on assessments that are decades old, many dating from the 1980's. The lack of transparency in the methods and even confusion in the units has led to the published metrics being applied incorrectly. Even within the same paper, the calculation is often performed several different ways, leading to errors and confusion on several orders of magnitude. An assessment of land use by major electricity production technologies and fuels as well as an explanation and guide to commonly used metrics is provided. • Estimates of land use by power generation technologies vary by orders of magnitude, with inconsisten methodologies. • The energy transition will cause drastic changes to land use, which provides barriers to adoption of renewables. • Storage has relatively high use of land, which has so far been almost unexplored in the literature. • Natural gas has lowest land use but there is potential for renewables to improve land use profile via mixed-use development. • Further development of land use metrics including ecosystem services is needed for betterfor better sustainability assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the US, building sector consumes approximately 41% of all U.S. primary energy and 70% of all generated electricity. Office building uses the largest percentage of primary and derived energy in the commercial buildings sector. Therefore, energy saving is the primary target of building renovation and equipment retrofit. To estimate energy savings after a renovation or equipment retrofit, measurement and verification (M&V) must be conducted based on energy use models or benchmark tools to track and assess savings. Although some methods and modeling tools are applied more often, there is no well-accepted model formulation methodology and some methods have high uncertainty. This paper discusses a method to formulate the energy use model as an inverse regression model via an advanced and robust high-dimensional data analysis method. According to the inverse regression model, independent variables determined to be most influential to the energy consumption should be metered prior to building retrofit or audit. To select the most influential variables, this research considers a comprehensive set of potential key variables to avoid underspecified model issue. The models established by this method are observed to have great power in predicting the building energy consumption. More importantly, through the variable selection procedure, the method identifies key variables that should be monitored to continuously improve the building energy performance. A simulation study and a case study are presented to show the effectiveness of the new approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although energy resource sustainability has been researched extensively, the understanding of how we use and interact with electricity sustainably is less understood. New electrical designs, like microgrids, provide opportunities to better address the immediate needs of electrical sustainability and urban development. This paper analyzes the role of microgrids in urban development and examines how greater systemic thinking between infrastructure planning and energy policymaking can increase a city’s resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a range of existing and emerging options for financing renewable electricity. We use the United States as a reference case study. To contextualize the discussion, we begin with scenarios for the deployment of various renewable energy technologies globally, followed by coverage of the United States renewable energy supply, supporting policies, and an introduction to renewable electricity finance for the non-specialist reader. We subsequently cover several prominent historical delivery mechanisms for the provision of renewable electricity finance, as well as key emerging opportunities. Further research in this area is encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity power is a basic industrial component which plays an important role in the economy of a nation. In this paper, the correlations evolution of electricity prices among 50 states and the District of Columbia are studied based on random matrix theory (RMT) Four regime shifts are identified from January 1990 to August 2014 in the U.S. residential, commercial and industrial electricity markets. Then, the genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to analyze the clusters of evolution. The results show that, the correlations of electricity prices increased continually in the three departments. However, it decreased in 2012 which further confirms its sensitivity to fuel market. Besides, four regime shifts exist in the three departments though the different times of occurrence caused by price level. And, the fluctuation of community evolution is consistent with four regime shifts. The final part is a summary of the research analyzed and results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind-generated electricity is a growing renewable energy resource. Because wind results from the uneven heating (and resulting pressure gradients) of the Earth, future wind resources may be affected by anticipated climate change. Many studies have used global and regional climate models to predict trends in the future wind resource over the continental United States. While some of these studies identified regions that are expected to gain wind energy, their results often come with a high degree of uncertainty, and lack of agreement across different climate models. In this paper we focus on wind energy density as a measure of the available wind resource over the continental United States. We estimate the change in wind energy density from the period 1968–2000 to the period 2038–2070 by using output from four regional climate models from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). We find strong agreement across all 4 models that the wind energy resource is expected to increase in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and northern Texas – a region already in possession of both large scale generating capacity and political support for wind energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a methodology for estimating marginal emissions of electricity demand that vary by location and time of day across the United States. The approach takes account of the generation mix within interconnected electricity markets and shifting load profiles throughout the day. Using data available for 2007 through 2009, with a focus on carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), we find substantial variation among locations and times of day. Marginal emission rates are more than three times as large in the upper Midwest compared to the western United States, and within regions, rates for some hours of the day are more than twice those for others. We apply our results to an evaluation of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The CO 2 emissions per mile from driving PEVs are less than those from driving a hybrid car in the western United States and Texas. In the upper Midwest, however, charging during the recommended hours at night implies that PEVs generate more emissions per mile than the average car currently on the road. Underlying many of our results is a fundamental tension between electricity load management and environmental goals: the hours when electricity is the least expensive to produce tend to be the hours with the greatest emissions. In addition to PEVs, we show how our estimates are useful for evaluating the heterogeneous effects of other policies and initiatives, such as distributed solar and real-time pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With all energy production systems there are environmental issues to be considered, risks to be assessed, and challenges to be addressed. It must be emphasized that an ideal energy source that is at the same time efficient, cost-effective, environment-friendly, and risk-free does not exist. There are always some necessary trade-offs to be made, in order to ensure optimal use of energy resources, while limiting environmental and health impacts. Nuclear energy is currently the only technology with a secure base-load electricity supply and no greenhouse gas emissions that has the potential to expand at a large scale. However, the spent fuel and safety issues must be addressed. Another base-load electricity source – the fossil-burning power plants – although affordable, emits various air pollutants (chemical and radioactive effluents, dust, ash, etc.), which are dispersed from a power source and transported through various pathways that could lead to the general population exposure. This paper summarizes current status and future trends in base-load electricity sources in the U.S., including environmental footprints, new regulatory requirements, and cost issues. It also presents an analysis of challenges that need to be overcome and opportunities that could us lead us closer to a sustainable energy future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper evaluates the solar water heating systems for the U.S. typical residential buildings, from the energetic, economic and environmental perspectives, and includes two different types of solar collectors (i.e. flat-plate and evacuated-tube solar collectors), two types of auxiliary systems (i.e. natural gas and electricity), and three different locations (i.e. Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago). The performance of solar water heating systems is also compared with conventional systems that use either natural gas or electricity. The results showed that the flat-plate solar water heating systems using natural gas auxiliary heater has the best performance among all the types and at all locations. The energetic and environmental payback periods for solar water heating systems are less than half of a year, and the life cycle cost payback for solar water heating systems vary from 4 to 13 years for different cities and different configurations when using the conventional electrical water heating system in each city as the benchmark. For a representative case, i.e. flat-plate solar water heating system with natural gas auxiliary heater in Atlanta, sensitivity analysis shows that the daily hot water use has the most significant effects on energetic, environmental and economic performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Efforts towards decarbonizing the energy system have to focus on individual actors within the system. Their current and potential future stake in energy consumption and contribution to climate change has to be analyzed when formulating energy policies targeting system-wide reduction efforts. Focusing on firms, this paper develops a framework for the assessment of corporate carbon performance. We use this framework for an empirical assessment of the 100 largest US electricity producers within three different carbon scenarios. Our results show that in a scenario without changes in the US institutional environment electricity producers will not face a severe increase of their carbon exposure and only a small improvement regarding the carbon intensity of the electricity mix is achieved. In a scenario with more carbon-constrained US energy market conditions some companies face a financial risk from using and emitting carbon that more than triples compared to today. However, in a scenario with strong investments in renewable energy technologies the carbon dependency of electricity production can be significantly reduced. We discuss these findings from a climate policy and financial markets perspective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In Great Britain, electricity is traded in an energy-only market that relies upon bilateral trading until shortly before real time. The GB System Operator also uses bilateral trading to respond to changes in demand and generation and resolve transmission constraints. Prices are not explicitly spatial, although well-placed generators can charge the system operator more for their output. This paper argues that these arrangements are not well-suited for the challenges of accommodating nearly thirty percent of intermittent wind generation, often located far from demand. The market design already implemented in the north-eastern United States is likely to be more efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Wind speed forecasting is critical for the operations of wind turbine and penetration of wind energy into electricity systems. In this paper, a novel time series forecasting method is proposed for this purpose. This method originates from TK (Taylor Kriging) model, but is properly modified for the forecasting of wind speed time series. To investigate the performance of this new method, the wind speed data from an observation site in North Dakota, USA, are adopted. One-year hourly wind speed data are divided into 10 samples, and forecast is made for each sample. In the case study, both the modified TK method and (ARIMA) autoregressive integrated moving average method are employed and their performances are compared. It is found that on average, the proposed method outperforms the ARIMA method by 18.60% and 15.23% in terms of (MAE) mean absolute error and (RMSE) root mean square error. Meanwhile, further theoretical analysis is provided to discuss why the modified TK method is potentially more accurate than the ARIMA method for wind speed time series prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper addresses the need for electricity of rural areas in southern Iraq and proposes a photovoltaic (PV) solar system to power a health clinic in that region. The total daily health clinic load is 31.6kWh and detailed loads are listed. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) optimization computer model for distributed power, “HOMER,” is used to estimate the system size and its life-cycle cost. The analysis shows that the optimal system’s initial cost, net present cost, and electricity cost is US$ 50,700, US$ 60,375, and US$ 0.238/kWh, respectively. These values for the PV system are compared with those of a generator alone used to supply the load. We found that the initial cost, net present cost of the generator system, and electricity cost are US$ 4500, US$ 352,303, and US$ 1.332/kWh, respectively. We conclude that using the PV system is justified on humanitarian, technical, and economic grounds. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The changes experienced by electricity markets in recent years have created the necessity for more accurate forecast tools of electricity prices, both for producers and consumers. Many methodologies have been applied to this aim, but in the view of the authors, state space models are not yet fully exploited. The present paper proposes a univariate dynamic harmonic regression model set up in a state space framework for forecasting prices in these markets. The advantages of the approach are threefold. Firstly, a fast automatic identification and estimation procedure is proposed based on the frequency domain. Secondly, the recursive algorithms applied offer adaptive predictions that compare favourably with respect to other techniques. Finally, since the method is based on unobserved components models, explicit information about trend, seasonal and irregular behaviours of the series can be extracted. This information is of great value to the electricity companies’ managers in order to improve their strategies, i.e. it provides management innovations. The good forecast performance and the rapid adaptability of the model to changes in the data are illustrated with actual prices taken from the PJM interconnection in the US and for the Spanish market for the year 2002. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the development of electric power transmission access, pricing and investment policies in the US over the last 15 years and evaluates the current state of those policies. Pre-liberalization transmission access and pricing policies are reviewed first since more recent policies have evolved from them. FERC''s efforts to ensure that transmission owning utilities provide non-discriminatory access and pricing to wholesale transmission customers, culminating in Order 888 and 889 are discussed. These rules did not respond to problems created by a highly balkanized transmission system and only partially responded to problems caused by common ownership and operation of transmission networks with generating and marketing businesses in the same regions. These problems motivated FERC to seek to create Regional Transmission Organizations (RTO) meeting a long list of criteria related to governance, network operations, transmission pricing and investment as reflected in Order 2000. The slow pace of “voluntary” reform following Order 2000 led FERC to issue a proposed Standard Market Design Rule (SMD) which provided more detailed prescriptions for wholesale market design, network operations, regional planning, resource adequacy, and transmission investment. The SMD rule confronted enormous resistance from groups of utilities and states that had not embraced an electricity sector liberalization agenda. However, many of the provisions of the SMD are being implemented by the RTOs and ISOs in the Northeast and Midwest. PJM''s market rules and transmission pricing, planning and investment policies are reviewed as an articulation of FERC''s RTO and SMD visions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

One of the challenges for power industry restructuring is to maintain sufficient generation installed capacity to meet demand in nowadays and in the future, and the electricity market failure in California has brought this subject to the forefront of extensive debates. This paper initiates a review, assessment and discussion on some important issues related to ensuring adequate generation capacity additions under a competitive electricity market environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

With levelized electricity costs (LEC) of 10–12 USCts/kWh the well-known SEGS (Solar Electric Generating Systems) plants in California are presently the most successful solar technology for electricity generation [Price and Cable (2001) Proc. ASME Int. Solar Energy Conf. Forum 2001]. The SEGS plants apply a two-circuit system, consisting of the collector circuit and the Rankine cycle of the power block. These two-circuits are connected via a heat exchanger. In the case of the Direct Steam Generation (DSG) in the collector field [Zarza et al. (2001) Proc. Solar Forum 2001, Washington], the two-circuit system turns into a single-circuit system, where the collector field is directly coupled to the power block. This renders a lower investment and higher process temperatures resulting in a higher system efficiency. Due to the lower investment and the higher efficiency a reduction of the LEC of 10% is expected when the DSG process is combined with improved components of the solar collectors [Zarza (2002) DISS Phase II Final Report, EU Contract No. JOR3-CT98-0277]. Within the European DISS (Direct Solar Steam) project the feasibility of the direct steam generation has been proven in more than 3700 operation hours. Steam conditions of 100 bar and 400 °C have been demonstrated. This paper presents the main scientific results of the DISS project that aims at the investigation and demonstration of the DSG process in parabolic troughs under real solar conditions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]