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This paper investigates the current state of market integration among European electricity day-ahead spot prices. In our empirical analysis we utilize a large sample of hourly spot prices of 25 European markets for the period 2010Jan01/01h- 2015Jun30/24h and combine it with other relevant data such as hourly interconnector capacities and the existence of market coupling. Firstly, empirical results from cointegration analysis indicate that market integration increased from 2010 to 2012 but then declined until 2015, despite the introduction of market coupling in many markets. Secondly, we empirically assess error correction after price shocks and reach the conclusion that markets' strength of the error correction mechanism is rather modest. In general, our findings suggest that the integration among European electricity markets has a large potential for improvements from additional capacity investments and further promotion of market coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time, we investigated species composition, phytoplankton community structure, and hydrochemical parameters in the artificial cooling reservoir of a major thermal power plant (TPP) in northeastern Europe located in the Pechora River basin (Komi Republic). Our research, conducted during June and August, revealed a total of 81 species of algae and cyanobacteria, with cyanobacteria predominating. Among these cyanobacteria and microalgae (Bacillariophyta and Chlorophyta), algae that serve as reliable indicators of water quality were identified. The assessment of water quality based on abundance and species composition of indicator phytoplankton species revealed that the waters of the Pechorskoe Reservoir belong to the III class (β-mesosaprobic or moderately polluted). This indicates that water quality is satisfactory, and the reservoir retains the ability to self-purify. The power plant's discharges heat the surface layers, increasing plankton communities' diversity, abundance, and biomass. Such stable warming in the upper layers throughout the season, uncommon for natural water bodies in the north, results in a slight increase in the trophic status of the studied reservoir, supported by hydrochemical analysis. These results provide valuable information about ecosystem functioning under temperature increasing for predicting changes in the phototrophic biota of small northern reservoirs facing the impacts of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Thermal storage may be a particularly attractive approach in service sector buildings, particularly for space conditioning, since it can help to reduce the electricity costs taking advantage of variable electricity rates while helping the grid to overcome the intermittent output of renewable energy. The aim of this paper is to describe globally the thermal storage system, which will be coupled to the ground source heat pump (GSHP), which was installed in a public building in Coimbra within the European Project from FP7 - Ground-Med. This project aims to demonstrate a high seasonal performance factor for ground source heat pumps (GSHP) that will be installed in pilot buildings in southern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central aim of this paper is to present an intergovernmentalist evaluation of the prospects for the European Union (EU) member states to pursue a common energy security policy at the supranational level. Particularly, the analysis seeks to address the demands for a common EU stance concerning the issue of energy supply security. Thus, the paper leaves aside other cornerstones of a common EU energy policy, namely the issues of environmental protection and liberalization of the electricity and gas markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric power grids, which form an essential part of the critical infrastructure, are evolving into highly distributed, dynamic networks in order to address the climate change. This fundamental transition relies on extensive automation solutions based on communications and information technologies. Thus, it also gives rise to new attack points for malicious actors and consequently, increases the vulnerability of the electric energy system. This study presents a qualitative assessment of power grid cybersecurity through expert interviews across countries in Europe and the U.S. to gain understanding of the latest developments and trends in the cybersecurity of future electric energy systems. The horizon of the assessment is 10 years spanning until the early 2030s. Thereafter, the study identifies how and to which extent the risks identified to be most significant are understood and addressed in the latest research and industry publications aiming at identifying areas deserving specific further attention. The most significant threats based on the assessment are False Data Injection (FDI), Denial of Service (DoS) supply chain, and ransomware and malware attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Elevators and escalators have received little attention from an energy efficiency perspective in the past. To close this gap, this paper analyses energy efficiency potentials and suggests policy measures for the European elevator and escalator market. As a precondition, the electrical energy demand of elevators and escalators in the European market is analyzed, based on expert estimations and the results of a monitoring campaign. The estimated current demand is compared to scenarios where the implementation of best available technology for the relevant equipment is assumed and the savings potentials thereof are calculated. The results indicate that considerable technical efficiency potentials exist for elevators (more than 60%) and escalators (around 30%). However, various specific barriers impede the diffusion of these energy-efficient technologies. They include issues like a lack of awareness and relevant information as well as split-incentive problems. The technological analysis is therefore complemented by an investigation of how to overcome these barriers, leading to a set of recommendations on how to improve energy efficiency in the elevator and escalator market. Suitable measures could be implementing standardized methods for electricity measurement, introducing a labeling system and including elevators and escalators in the legislative framework. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper considers the European approaches to assessment of the buildings' energy efficiency. We scrutinize their advantages and disadvantages. Specifically, we investigate the feasibility of one of the approaches by employing the example of NTUU "KPI" educational buildings and define principal obstacles that hinder the utilization and can also lead to misinterpretation of the results obtained. We propose possible ways of specification of existing methods and attempt to adapt them to the Ukrainian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional generators in power grids are steadily substituted with new renewable sources of electric power. The latter are connected to the grid via inverters and as such have little, if any rotational inertia. The resulting reduction of total inertia raises important issues of power grid stability, especially over short-time scales. With the motivation in mind to investigate how inertia reduction influences the transient dynamics following a fault in a large-scale electric power grid, we have constructed a model of the high voltage synchronous grid of continental Europe. To assess grid stability and resilience against disturbance, we numerically investigate frequency deviations as well as rates of change of frequency (RoCoF) following abrupt power losses. The magnitude of RoCoF's and frequency deviations strongly depend on the fault location, and we find the largest effects for faults located on the support of the slowest mode—the Fiedler mode—of the network Laplacian matrix. This mode essentially vanishes over Belgium, Eastern France, Western Germany, northern Italy and Switzerland. Buses inside these regions are only weakly affected by faults occuring outside. Conversely, faults inside these regions have only a local effect and disturb only weakly outside buses. Following this observation, we reduce rotational inertia through three different procedures by either (i) reducing inertia on the Fiedler mode, (ii) reducing inertia homogeneously and (iii) reducing inertia outside the Fiedler mode. We find that procedure (iii) has little effect on disturbance propagation, while procedure (i) leads to the strongest increase of RoCoF and frequency deviations. This shows that, beyond absorbing frequency disturbances following nearby faults, inertia also mitigates frequency disturbances from distant power losses, provided both the fault and the inertia are located on the support of the slowest modes of the grid Laplacian. These results for our model of the European transmission grid are corroborated by numerical investigations on the ERCOT transmission grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU Regulation 2009/72/EC concerning common rules for internal market in electricity calls upon 80% of EU electricity consumers to be equipped with smart metering systems by 2020, provided that a positive economic assessment of all long-term costs and benefits to the market and the individual consumer is guaranteed. Understanding the impact that smart metering systems may have on the electricity stakeholders (consumers, distribution system operators, energy suppliers and the society at large) is important for faster and effective deployment of such systems and of the innovative services they offer. For this purpose, in this paper an agent-based model is developed, where the electricity consumer behaviour due to different smart metering policies is simulated. Consumers are modelled as household agents having dynamic preferences on types of electricity contracts offered by the supplier. Development of preferences depends on personal values, memory and attitudes, as well as the degree of interaction in a social network structure. We are interested in exploring possible diffusion rates of smart metering enabled services under different policy interventions and the impact of this technological diffusion on individual and societal performance indicators. In four simulation experiments and three intervention policies we observe the diffusion of energy services and individual and societal performance indicators (electricity savings, CO2 emissions savings, social welfare, consumers' comfort change), as well as consumers' satisfaction. From these results and based on expert validation, we conclude that providing the consumer with more options does not necessarily lead to higher consumer's satisfaction, or better societal performance. A good policy should be centred on effective ways to tackle consumers concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis of the topological structure and static tolerance to errors and attacks of the September 2003 actualization of the Union for the Coordination of Transport of Electricity (UCTE) power grid, involving thirty-three different networks. Though every power grid studied has exponential degree distribution and most of them lack typical small-world topology, they display patterns of reaction to node loss similar to those observed in scale-free networks. We have found that the node removal behavior can be logarithmically related to the power grid size. This logarithmic behavior would suggest that, though size favors fragility, growth can reduce it. We conclude that, with the ever-growing demand for power and reliability, actual planning strategies to increase transmission systems would have to take into account this relative increase in vulnerability with size, in order to facilitate and improve the power grid design and functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploitation of lignite in continuous surface mines requires removing masses of overburden, which are hauled to a dumpsite. There are some technological arrangements where the overburden is transported several dozen meters down to a spreader operating on a lower located dumping level. Depending on an angle of a declined transportation route, there is a possibility to convert the potential gravitational energy of conveyed down overburden masses into electric energy. To recover the maximum percentage of stored energy, an energy-effective and fully loaded belt conveyor should work in a generator mode. Due to the implementation of such a solution, a lignite continuous surface mine, which is a great electric energy consumer, can obtain the status of an electricity prosumer and reduce its environmental impact, in particular demonstrating significant savings in primary energy consumption. Though lignite surface mining is phasing out in Europe, the recuperative, overburden conveyors for downhill transport match up the targets of sustainable mining, understood as getting the maximum benefits from the exploited natural resources. According to the analyzed case study, an investment into the installation of regenerative inverters for the electric power supply of the declined overburden conveyor would pay off within 3–4 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]