Institutional competition protects consumers: Public power vs. private power

The historical competition between public power and private power shows that retail customers have chosen the former to reduce costs and improve customer service. Research also shows that publicly owned utilities employ cost-minimizing algorithms, and that federal and state regulators favor the interests of investors over those of customers, undermining their obligation to protect consumer welfare. Institutional options matter and should be strongly encouraged.     

从需求侧管理到需求侧响应

需求侧响应是近几年经济合作暨发展组织（OECD）会员国研究和实践的一个新型课题。介绍了需求侧响应的内涵及其与需求侧管理的关系,重点分析了需求侧响应对电力市场稳定有效运行和对消费者选择的重要作用．并提出在我国建立实时电价用户群的方案。该方案在现阶段可以起到利用市场来理顺电价、传递成本、平衡利益、化解纷争的作用,同时能与下一阶段的双边开放模式有效衔接。     

供电企业顾客满意度指数测评方案探讨

比较分析了顾客满意率和顾客满意度指数的区别,论述了顾客满意度指数测评的重要意义和应用价值。供电企业有必要借鉴国际先进经验,采用顾客满意度指数深入细致地测评顾客的满意程度,为改进和提高服务质量提供科学的依据。在理论模型选择的基础上,提出了测评的思路,顾客的分类和顾客满意度指数测评的方案。     

Electrification: The nexus between consumer behavior and public policy

With deepening concerns over climate change, policymakers, electric utilities, environmentalists and others are increasingly championing the idea of ‘electrification,’ or the replacement of fossil fuels with electricity for direct end uses like transportation and space heating. The electric industry sees electrification as an opportunity for revitalizing sales and revenues. The focus of this paper is on consumer behavior and its nexus with public policy for advancing electrification.     

Localizing energy decision-making through community choice: The Utah community renewable energy act

City commitments to 100% renewable electricity (100RE) have been rapidly spreading across the US, with concentrations in a few states. Unexpectedly, Utah has the third most 100RE adopting cities of any state, and some of the most significant progress to date. This has been through the Utah Community Renewable Energy Act—a statute committing the major utility to fulfilling any city 100RE resolution passed through 2019. Now 23 diverse communities are eligible to join the program and reach 100RE by 2030.This paper uses case study analysis to examine this legislation and the involved communities. Process tracing methods identify causal factors in enacting this legislation at the state level and resolutions at the local level. Results show that utility support was leveraged through franchise agreement negotiations in major communities. Together, these cities and utility created a pathway to 100RE for communities of any size to join, functionally sharing their capacity. The Utah Community Renewable Energy Act serves as a replicable example to cities that wish to pursue renewable electricity without transferring control of energy sourcing or delivery. This policy is the first of its kind, exemplifying ground up institutional innovation, and a shift towards more localized energy decision making.     

The economic geography of fuel choice: The spatial nexus of consumer economics and carbon emissions is fundamental to effective decarbonization policy-making

Many state and local governments are considering ways to decarbonize their building sectors. This study evaluates domestic heat pumps’ relative advantage over comparable natural gas-burning systems in terms of consumer economics and carbon impacts in 48 states, accounting for disparities in physical and market conditions that determine system’s use and costs. The results show that decarbonization policies are more likely to succeed in states where potential carbon benefits coincide with favorable consumer economics.     

Demand response in electricity generation planning

In this research, a simulation model is proposed to study the impact of consumer response rate on capacity and production planning. Different generation technologies such as base-load generation technologies and intermittent renewable energy technologies are considered. The simulation results show that the impact of DR depends on market price, the degree of demand elasticity, and the marginal cost of generation. As the rate of consumer response increases, investment in peak generation capacity becomes economically infeasible.     

CDF-based Reliability Insurance Contracts Considering Free-riding

As a result of many disadvantages faced by the regulator in current regulatory schemes, reliability insurance scheme (RIS) has been introduced as a new regulatory scheme. This scheme allows consumers to determine their coverage levels according to their value for reliability services (i.e., cost incurred for outages), and pay corresponding premiums to the utility. The utility is then required to reimburse consumers for outages according to their outage cost. The consumer’s outage cost is extremely dependent on the duration of outages and this dependency is well defined by a function known as a Customer Damage Function (CDF). To enable consumers to fully cover the reliability risks, utility should provide consumers with contracts which allow them to select coverage levels according to their CDF.Due to the inflexibility of electrical grids, most utilities cannot differentiate the reliability services at the household level and so the public good aspects of the reliability services are emphasized. In such circumstances, selfish consumers can misrepresent their willingness to pay for the reliability services and benefit from their neighbors’ choices (i.e. free-ride on the reliable services provided for their neighbors). Free-riding may lead to the underinvestment in the grid. In this paper, primarily, CDF-based insurance contracts are designed and in following, a method for solving the free-riding problem is presented.     

Understanding tariff designs and consumer behaviour to employ electric vehicles for secondary purposes in the United Kingdom

Electric Vehicle (EV) uptake has increased rapidly in the recent years. The rate of EV use is likely to increase in the future as well. At this point, the topic of using EVs for secondary purposes other than mobility and transport is getting more popular. This paper outlines the importance of tariff designs and EV consumer behaviour in achieving the business models such as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Home (V2H). We took the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study country to demonstrate how crucial electricity tariffs and consumer behaviour are.     

Cost-of-Service Rates to Market-Based Rates to Price Caps to ?!#?#!?

Market-based rate authority cannot be granted on the mere hope and assumption that market forces will emerge to discipline rates. Past FERC leniency must not be permitted to become tomorrow's consumer nightmare.     

考虑用户侧参与的调峰辅助服务费用分摊机制

现行调峰辅助服务费用的分摊机制仅在电厂侧收支平衡,而电网的峰谷差在一定程度上是由负荷的峰谷特性造成的,不考虑用户分摊的调峰费用分摊机制并不合理,为此,建立考虑用户侧参与的调峰费用分摊机制.在电厂侧,根据负荷率大小对常规机组的分摊电量进行修正,利用波形相似性理论对风电机组的分摊电量进行修正,保证分摊的合理性;在用户侧,通...     

电能质量与电磁兼容性

电能质量是保证用电设备正常工作的关键,用电设备的属性和电磁兼容性又是影响电能质量的重要因素,电能质量和用电设备有着密切的联系;为保证用电设备的可靠运行,颁布了相关的电能质量和电磁兼容国家标准,它们为用电设备的设计、生产提供了依据,也是保证用电设备正常工作的基础。     

利用程序远程更新实现电压合格率采集

电压合格率反映的是供电企业向电力用户供应合格电能的能力,利用程序远程更新技术实现负荷管理控制终端的电压合格率采集和传输是实现电压合格率采集、监测的关键技术。采用该技术可加强供电企业在用户侧供电质量的监测,细化电能质量管理,为以后负荷管理系统在用户侧管理的更高级应用提供经验。     

电力需求侧管理中的分时电价研究

峰谷分时电价作为现阶段一种有效的需求侧管理手段,是电力公司向用户实施的一种通过价格信号引导用户合理用电的有效经济刺激手段。它在优化电力资源配置等方面起到了积极的作用。科学合理的分时电价,能够赋予电价必要的弹性,拉大峰谷时段电价差,达到削峰填谷和提高电网负荷率的需求侧管理目标。基于负荷曲线分布分析,在初步划分峰谷时段的基础上,利用用户对电力商品的需求价格弹性矩阵,建立峰谷分时电价数学模型,并对该模型的目标函数进行优化,得到一种分时电价定价方法。对邢台供电公司的算例进行了仿真,说明了该模型的可行性。     

大用户负荷预测管理系统

为了提高地区短期负荷预测水平,掌握地区典型大用户的负荷特点,有必要建立一套系统、全面的地区大用户负荷分析预测管理系统。系统采用成熟的Java2Enterprise Edition(J2EE)多层体系Browser/Server(B/S)结构,以负荷特性分析为基础,精细化的预测流程为核心,考虑与大用户相关的气象要素、生产计划、日类型等因素,形成了大用户"分析、预测、管理"一体化机制。系统给负荷预测部门提供了详细的大用户特性报告。将大用户负荷预测结果融入到地区负荷预测中,提高了地区预测精度。     

基于改进神经网络的用电客户信用评价

在分析影响用电客户信用因素的基础上,建立了一套适用于用电客户信用评价的指标体系,采用BP神经网络建立用电客户信用评价模型,用遗传算法优化BP神经网络的连接权重和阈值,解决了BP神经网络存在落入局部最小点和收敛速度慢的问题,两者结合,实现了优势互补.实例研究表明,评价值与实际值相差较小,遗传神经网络的评价结果是令人满意的.     

Interruption costs of service sector electricity customers,a hybrid approach

A power outage brings in economic losses for both the customers and the utilities. Studying these unwanted events and making solid predictions about the outcomes of the interruptions has been an attractive area of interest for the researchers for the last couple of decades. By making use of a customer survey study conducted in Finland, this paper benefits from both the reported cost data collected from customers and from the analytical data that are available and then presents a new hybrid approach to estimate the customer interruption costs of service sector customer segment. Making use of Value Added information of the customers is a common practice for the cost normalization purposes. This paper verifies the approach by comparing the findings of the customer survey and the econometric model suggested here. This study is a unique source in terms of providing a reliable, easy to apply, and a straightforward model for calculating the economic impacts of power outages.     

华中电网输电线路利用份额计算

输电定价的过程可以看作是电网费用在输电系统用户间的分摊过程.因此,了解各输电用户对输电线路的利用份额便成为计算输电电价的关键.结合华中电网的运行特性,文章分别采用潮流分析方法与交易合同分析方法计算了华中主网线路的利用份额.计算结果表明,在确保公平、公正和与实际操作相衔接的条件下,利用后一种方法可取得较为理想的效果,可为进一步计算输电电价提供可靠依据.     

A method for optimal pricing of electric supply including transmission system considerations

Determining real-time electricity rate structures is currently receiving a great deal of attention. In this paper, a strategy for pricing electricity supply is formulated and evaluated. Unlike other methods which use only the variation of fuel cost for generation to estimate the rate structures, the proposed pricing algorithm incorporates the optimal allocation of transmission system operating costs based on time-of-use pricing. The transmission costs are obtained by assigning a price k to each unit of power flow in the network. The assignment does not discriminate between participants located at differing parts of the network. The real-time pricing reflects the instantaneous cost of production and functions as a load management tool because this interacts with consumer behavior. The demand for power flows and transmission on an electricity supply system, like the demand for any bundle of economic goods depends upon the assigned transmission prices, together with the economic benefit to the consumer. It is assumed that there are no privately owned generating plants and that all plants and transmission lines are operated by the utility. The modeling scheme is applied to the IEEE standard 5, 14, 30 and 57 bus power systems and involves solving a modified optimal power flow problem (OPF) iteratively using the MINOS package. It is concluded that the method has a wide potential application in electricity supply pricing.     

基于多目标聚类的用电集群特征属性计算

提出售电市场中用电集群与分析维度概念.确定集群特征变量后,采用自组织映射神经网络与k-均值混合可视化聚类技术对售电空间进行自定义目标划分.基于负荷与经济指标,设计熵权改进的多指标属性测度算法对多目标划分下用电集群特性进行精细化定量综合计算,以分析各对象属性整体相对优劣.采集某电网317个用户数据进行算例分析,结果表明该算法能区别于传统负荷特性分析方法,在扩大售电市场研究对象基础上实现更多有效信息挖掘与多目标售电对象特征精细分析.