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Implementation of advanced metering of gas and water consumption is an ongoing challenge in some developing countries. After a review of the literature, five strategies of advanced metering that could be implemented for increasing the use of advanced metering were identified, considering Brazil as a case study: transfer of the ownership of metering instruments from utilities to other users, establishment of a metering service provider, development of a metering systems inspection agent, use of prepaid systems operated by condominiums and methods for data transmission for on-site remote meter reading. To assess the feasibility of each strategy, fourteen experts from utility companies and companies involved in the implementation of remote and individual metering systems were interviewed. After a content analysis and validation of the experts' responses, strategies for implementing advanced utility metering were proposed, that entail relatively simple actions that may be accomplished by local players involved directly in metering activities Resumen: Implementación de medición avanzada del consumo de gas y de agua es un desafío permanente en algunos países en desarrollo. Después de una revisión de la literatura, se identificaron cinco estrategias de medición avanzada que se podrían implementar para aumentar el uso de la medición avanzada, considerando a Brasil como un estudio de caso: la transferencia de la propiedad de los instrumentos de medición de los servicios públicos para los demás usuarios, creación de un proveedor de servicios de medición, el desarrollo de un agente de la inspección de los sistemas de medición, el uso de sistemas de prepago operados por condominios e implementar métodos para la transmisión de datos de las instalaciones a través de lectura remota de medidores. Para evaluar la viabilidad de cada estrategia, se entrevistó a catorce expertos de las empresas de servicios públicos y las empresas que participan en la implementación de sistemas de medición remotos e individuales. Después de un análisis de contenido y la validación de las respuestas de los expertos, se propone estrategias para la implementación de la medición avanzada que impliquen acciones relativamente simples y que pueden ser realizadas por los agentes locales que están participando directamente en las actividades de medición Aberto

Energy consumption monitoring and regulation on large-scale public buildings are always an indispensable part in building energy conservation. With the mounting establishment of the building sub-metering platform, massive amounts of historical power consumption data are provided. In this paper, different building types of six large-scale public buildings in Shanghai are selected, with their sub-metering data deeply analyzed. The concept of CDHs/HDHs (cooling/heating degree hours) is introduced and weekly prediction models of total building power consumption are proposed by the way of multiple linear regression algorithm which is relatively simple and easy to understand. The prediction models are validated to have great accuracy and general applicability in the paper, offering reliable instructions to the building facility manager and relevant competent authorities in terms of decision making and policy implementation.

Within the UK water industry, electrical energy demand, efficiency and sustainability are primary factors when considering the construction and installation of new electrical process plant. This stems from the environmental gains made in reducing electrical power consumption, and the cost saving benefits realised across an electrical assets lifecycle. The average life of electrical assets also varies greatly, and with the speed at which new technology is being developed, they also quickly become superseded. Additionally, the electrical data you can extract from newer assets has become more granular, for example a motor control centre will now provide fieldbus power monitors per pump, rather than a single CT/VT monitor on the incomer. This provides the ability to pinpoint areas where further efficiencies can be achieved and/or were certain devices are failing. Difficulties however, manifest when trying to understand how the older electrical assets of a process site are performing from an energy perspective. Further still. If these devices are not on the roadmap for replacement, then the potential for granular power data may not be realised for some time. On these sites, the site power is seen is a single unit of measure, in the MWh range, whereas it is now a requirement for device level readings as low as single figure kWh. Therefore, in order to achieve accurate results from the older assets, power monitoring equipment requires retrofitting. This paper will investigate the challenges involved in installing a sub-metering system across an existing, aging electrical asset base, where monitoring was not engineered within the original design. Further to this, it will discuss the obstacles faced when transferring data from site through to corporate historians and provide recommendations for future work.

Essay 1: People’s planning to evade the inheritance tax curtails its merits. However, the extent of planning remains a matter of argument. According to popular belief, it is widespread, but few estimates have been presented. This study estimates the extent of estate size under-reporting, a form of inheritance tax planning, using the repeal of the Swedish tax on spousal bequests, in 2004, and a regression discontinuity design. The results show that, on average, estate sizes were 17 percent lower, and the share of estates that completely escaped tax payments was 26 percent larger due to under-reporting. As a consequence, government revenues from the tax were only half of what they would have been without under-reporting. Moreover, preferences and means for under-reporting were not only prevalent among the wealthy, but also among those receiving relatively small inheritances. The study contributes to a growing literature on tax avoidance and evasion by estimating the extent of estate size under-reporting, its effect on government revenues and by showing that it was widespread in the population. Essay 2: There is an ongoing debate about whether or not inheritance and estate taxes are effective in raising revenues and in contributing to a more equal society. The different views on transfer taxes are largely dependent on beliefs about whether people plan their wealth to avoid these taxes. In this paper, we follow Kopczuk (2007) and study people's planning response to the onset of terminal illness. An extension of Kopczuk’s work is that we can effectively control for responses in wealth caused by terminal illness but unrelated to tax planning. We do this by exploiting a tax reform in Sweden that removed the incentives for people to plan their estates to avoid inheritance taxation. We find some evidence of long-term terminal illness inducing responses consistent with tax planning, but that these are not widespread or efficient enough to reduce the overall tax burden in the study population. Our results, similarly to those of Kopczuk, show that people appear to postpone some decisions about their estates until shortly before death. Essay 3: Small businesses form an essential part of all economies, making it necessary to understand the conditions under which they operate. This paper contributes to that understanding by studying how survival, income and profits of small businesses change when their owners receive inheritances. Using a difference-in-differences strategy and Swedish registry data on small businesses and estate reports, it is shown that survival rates increase with almost three percentage points when the owners receive inheritances of, on average, SEK 275,000. However, the profits of the surviving small businesses and the income of their owners do not increase, indicating that the inheritance did not increase survival by making investments possible, investments to increase profits and income, but by enabling small business owners of lower ability to subsist. The study contributes to the literature on the conditions for small businesses by providing causal evidence on the effect of increased access to capital among existing businesses. It thereby complements the rich literature on the role of capital for small business start-ups. Essay 4: This article shows that a simple monetary incentive can dramatically reduce electric energy consumption (EEC) in the residential sector and simultaneously achieve a more desirable allocation of EEC costs. The analyses are based on data from a policy experiment conducted in 2011 and 2012 by a private housing company in about 1,800 apartments. Roughly 800 of the tenants (treatment group) were subject to a change from having unlimited EEC included in their rent to having to pay the market price for their own EEC. This change was achieved by installing EEC meters in each apartment. Tenants in the other 1,000 apartments (control group) experienced no policy change and were subject to apartment-level billing and metering during the entire study period. Using a quasiexperimental research design and daily data on EEC from 2007 to 2015, we estimate that apartment-level billing and metering permanently reduce EEC by about 25%. Moreover, we show that households reduce EEC immediately after being informed that they will be billed for EEC, the reduction is larger when the production cost is higher, and the reduction in EEC comes almost exclusively from households with very high EEC before the policy change. Finally, we show that apartment-level billing and metering are cost-effective, with a cost per reduced kilowatt hour of US$0.01, and for each invested dollar, the social value of reductions in air pollution, including CO2 emissions, is $2.

Implementation of advanced metering of gas and water consumption is an ongoing challenge in some developing countries. After a review of the literature, five strategies of advanced metering that could be implemented for increasing the use of advanced metering were identified, considering Brazil as a case study: transfer of the ownership of metering instruments from utilities to other users, establishment of a metering service provider, development of a metering systems inspection agent, use of prepaid systems operated by condominiums and methods for data transmission for on-site remote meter reading. To assess the feasibility of each strategy, fourteen experts from utility companies and companies involved in the implementation of remote and individual metering systems were interviewed. After a content analysis and validation of the experts' responses, strategies for implementing advanced utility metering were proposed, that entail relatively simple actions that may be accomplished by local players involved directly in metering activities. Implementación de medición avanzada del consumo de gas y de agua es un desafío permanente en algunos países en desarrollo. Después de una revisión de la literatura, se identificaron cinco estrategias de medición avanzada que se podrían implementar para aumentar el uso de la medición avanzada, considerando a Brasil como un estudio de caso: la transferencia de la propiedad de los instrumentos de medición de los servicios públicos para los demás usuarios, creación de un proveedor de servicios de medición, el desarrollo de un agente de la inspección de los sistemas de medición, el uso de sistemas de prepago operados por condominios e implementar métodos para la transmisión de datos de las instalaciones a través de lectura remota de medidores. Para evaluar la viabilidad de cada estrategia, se entrevistó a catorce expertos de las empresas de servicios públicos y las empresas que participan en la implementación de sistemas de medición remotos e individuales. Después de un análisis de contenido y la validación de las respuestas de los expertos, se propone estrategias para la implementación de la medición avanzada que impliquen acciones relativamente simples y que pueden ser realizadas por los agentes locales que están participando directamente en las actividades de medición.

Individual metering of energy in flats is a real opportunity to save energy and money for the occupiers of collective-ownership buildings with centralised heating systems. The individual management of energy, through such devices, make users more responsible and also stimulates them to implement energy retrofit interventions in their flats. The use of individual metering systems in existing apartments, however, could have some critical aspects. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the application of individual energy systems in existing collective-ownership residential buildings, highlighting the critical aspects and providing practical solutions to overcome them. A study has been made of an individual metering application in an existing residential block of flats located in Milan (Italy) with poor thermal insulation between the various dwellings themselves and for the outside walls of the building. Although a net reduction of 50.4 % in the global costs for winter heating, obtained exclusively through plant-modification works, represents an optimum goal for energy savings, the study highlight some critical aspects. The savings for different apartments differ greatly and depend upon the criteria chosen for burden sharing. This study shows that the phenomenon of “heat theft” can prove to be important and provides the possibility of reducing to zero the quota of expenses from consumption whilst still benefiting from comfortable temperatures. Once the problems have been identified, the paper then proposes solutions to overcome them through a revision of the criteria for the allocation of energy costs.

Predicting short term electricity load accurately is critical to facilitate demand side management in the building sector. For buildings that have electricity sub-metering systems installed, it is possible to predict both the total electricity load and the loads of individual building service systems (air conditioning, lighting, power, and other equipment). In this paper, a method based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) is proposed to predict the loads at system level. For each type of system, 24 SVM models (one model per hour) were trained and deployed to predict the hourly electricity load. The inputs for the prediction method are simply weather predictions and hourly electricity loads in two previous days. A case study shows that the proposed method outperforms three other popular data mining methods (ARIMAX, Decision Tree, and Artificial Neural Network) in both CV_RMSE and N_MBE. Thus, SVM method is suggested for predicting system level electricity loads of public buildings.