Global energy and electricity futures

A global energy perspective for the middle of the next century is presented. The premises for the projections are described. Included are assumptions as to how much conservation the world might achieve. Projections are then made for the year 2060, assuming that the global fossil fuel mix of coal, oil, and gas will not have changed substantially and that the renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass will have become commercially successful and be utilized at their maximum reasonable contribution. As a result of these projections, at least a doubling of annual carbon emissions globally is predicted. Steps that could be taken to reduce carbon emissions are discussed     

Comparative analysis for energy production processes (EPPs): Sustainable energy futures for Turkey

This study presents a comparative analysis of three different energy production process (EPP) scenarios for Turkey. Main goal is to incorporate the prioritization criteria for the assessment of various energy policies for power alternatives, and evaluating these policies against these criteria. The three types of EPPs reviewed in this study are: electricity production from wind farms in the future, existing coal-based thermal power plants and planned nuclear power plants. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is utilized to assess the main and sub-factors of EPPs. Main factors such as economic, technical, social and environmental are assigned in first level of the AHP. The importance weights of factors are produced and priority values with realistic numbers are obtained using Fuzzy-AHP Chang’s Model. Priority value for wind energy was determined as two times higher than the others when making the ultimate decision. On aggregate, importance weights of environmental (0.68) and social (0.69) factors make wind power leader. Sub-factors such as public acceptance, waste-emission and environmental impacts cause both nuclear and thermal power to have the lowest priority numbers. Additionally, the CO₂ emissions trade was determined to be a very important criterion associated with both economic and environmental factors according to Kyoto Protocol. This study concludes that Turkey’s existing thermal power stations should gradually be substituted by renewable energy options according to a schedule of Turkish energy policies in future.     

Modeling energy efficiency insurances and energy performance contracts for a quantitative comparison of risk mitigation potential

Financial risk mitigation via Energy Performance Contracting or Energy Efficiency Insurances may overcome individual barriers for energy efficiency investments. However, while the financial industry, and especially insurance companies, may have compelling reasons to get involved in energy efficiency investments, the research on and real-world applications of risk transfer contracts for private decision-makers are scarce. Thus, this study quantitatively compares the risk mitigation potential of risk transfer contracts based on a comprehensive energy bill savings forecast model comprising stochastic processes for weather, commodity prices, and technological energy efficiency performance. The model is fitted with a unique dataset for German residential buildings. Our findings indicate that risk transfer contracts positively affect individual decision-makers' willingness to invest in energy efficiency. Generally, we find Energy Performance Contracts to be superior in most scenarios when transaction costs are not considered. However, insurance companies may benefit from diversification effects and by ceding risks to global capital markets and reinsurance companies.     

Public values for energy futures: Framing,indeterminacy and policy making

In the UK there are strong policy imperatives to transition toward low carbon energy systems but how and in what ways such transitional processes might be realised remains highly uncertain. One key area of uncertainty pertains to public attitudes and acceptability. Though there is wide-ranging research relevant to public acceptability, very little work has unpacked the multiple questions concerning how policy-makers can grapple with and mitigate related uncertainties in efforts to enact energy systems change. In this paper, public acceptability is identified as an indeterminate form of uncertainty that presents particular challenges for policy making. We build on our existing research into public values for energy system change to explore how the outcomes of the project can be applied in thinking through the uncertainties associated with public acceptability. Notably, we illustrate how the public values identified through our research bring into view alternative and quite different problem and solution framings to those currently evident within UK policy. We argue that engagement with a wide range of different framings can offer a basis for better understanding and anticipating public responses to energy system change, ultimately aiding in managing the complex set of uncertainties associated with public acceptability.     

Pure hydrogen production by PEM electrolysis for hydrogen energy

Last years hydrogen as energy carrier becomes one of the best solutions of energy and ecological problems. Intensive development of fuel cells, especially based on proton exchange membrane (PEM), where pure hydrogen is needed, stimulates electrolyzers development for the future application in hydrogen energy and technology. From point of view of the authors PEM electrolysis is very perspective for this goal. Advantages and possible fields of applications of this type of electrolyzers in comparison with another one are reviewed. Some results achieved up to now in PEM electrolysis, including last achievement of the authors, are summarized.     

Volatility spillovers for spot,futures, and ETF prices in agriculture and energy

The agricultural and energy industries are closely related, both biologically and financially. The paper discusses the relationship and the interactions on price and volatility, and on the covolatility spillover effects for these two industries. The interaction and covolatility spillovers, or the delayed effect of a returns shock in one asset on the subsequent volatility or covolatility in another asset, between the energy and agricultural industries is the primary emphasis of the paper. Although there has already been significant research on biofuel and biofuel-related crops, only a few published papers have been concerned with volatility spillovers. It must be emphasized that there have been numerous technical errors in the theoretical and empirical research, which need to be addressed. The paper considers futures prices as a widely-used hedging instrument, and also considers an interesting new hedging instrument, ETF, which is regarded as index futures when investors manage their portfolios. In the empirical analysis, multivariate conditional volatility diagonal BEKK models are estimated for comparing patterns of covolatility spillovers. The paper provides a new way of analyzing and describing the patterns of covolatility spillovers, which should be useful for the future empirical analysis of estimating and testing covolatility spillover effects.     

A novel market efficiency index for energy futures and their term structure risk premiums

This paper proposes a novel futures market efficiency index which aggregates the efficiencies of futures contracts across their term structure spanning from one month to 12 months. The index measures the ability for price discovery of a long-term futures contract on its nearby short-term contract consistently across its terms. The index uses a recently developed futures market efficiency test which accounts for heteroscedastic prices and time-varying risk premiums. It simultaneously estimates the term premiums of futures, providing valuable information for the investor. The proposed index is employed to investigate the efficiencies of four major energy commodities, namely, crude oil, natural gas, heating oil, and gasoil during the sample period 1990–2016. Numerical results indicate that the market efficiencies vary across terms and across energy commodities. Gasoil futures traded on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) are the most efficient and natural gas futures are the least efficient in prices. The spillover dynamics of market risk information across futures markets are investigated using conditionally heteroscedastic common factors (CHCFs) extracted for each commodity using the estimated term premiums. There exist significant delayed, contemporaneous, and potential information spillovers among term premiums of the energy commodities in our sample. Our findings are robust and they can help investors to optimally diversify their portfolios.     

Risk modelling in energy contracts between host utilities and BOTplant investors

Investor owned generation is being encouraged all over the world by the de-regulatory climate and the need to defray the heavy capital demands of plant. Contracts between the investor and the host utility determine the price of electricity and include penalties for nondelivery and compensation for failure to accept contracted energy. While it is widely appreciated that uncertainty of future conditions has an important bearing on the terms of the contract, especially in developing countries, a theoretical framework for examining these factors has not been developed. A theoretical model for linking the degree of future uncertainty, the expected production costs of the investor and the expected production cost of the host utility, with the electricity prices and penalty charges, is developed in this paper. The insight gained from these mathematical models will be useful in contractual decision making. The financial strategy employed is known as Build Operate and Transfer (BOT)     

Distributional predictability between commodity spot and futures: Evidence from nonparametric causality-in-quantiles tests

Unbiasedness and informational efficiency of futures markets under different market conditions is a claim that still remains unsettled in the theory of non-arbitrage and asset pricing and in empirics as well. This study investigates this claim using a novel causality-in-quantile model of Balcilar et al. (2016) for two energy commodities, crude oil and natural gas, and two precious metals, gold and silver. The model estimates causalities-in-mean and -variance between spot and futures market in a time varying context conditioning on the states of the markets represented by the quantiles of the conditional distribution of the dependent variable. The causality in return is asymmetric and unidirectional from futures to spot market for all commodities. That means the predictability of the futures market, due to its informational efficiency, is strong in the normal market and declines when the spot market enters into extreme bearish and bullish conditions. The causality-in-variance is bi-directional in the normal to bull markets except for natural gas where it is unidirectional from futures to spot only. It is a confirmation of the risk management and price discovery role of futures market. Lack of causality in the bear market entails some kind of disconnectedness between the spot and futures markets in a bad market where intervention is called for from the exchange and regulators to restore stability in the spot and futures market dynamics. Although economic uncertainty is found to have no impact on the causality-in-mean except gold; however, the causality-in -variance is influenced in the case of gold and crude. This is a kind of reaffirmation of the fact that under economic uncertainty, futures contracts are used for hedging under different market conditions. However, the causality between commodity spot and futures are resilient to exchange rate.     

Condensation tests on glass samples for energy efficient windows

This article presents results from a pilot study comparing condensation patterns on small glass samples with different surface properties. Experiments were carried out on three commercial glass samples (clear float, TiO₂-coated and SnO₂-coated) to see how water condensed on the different surfaces. The experiments were carried out under a clear night sky in Uppsala, Sweden. It was found that the pane with the low-emittance coating stayed clean of condensation longer than the other two. In the morning, the water layer on the TiO₂-coated sample was smeared out so that it was possible to see through that pane, while the view through the other two was still blurred. The TiO₂ coating does not prevent condensation, but makes it easier to see through the water layer. These simple tests indicate noticeable differences between different surface materials and also that these effects can be studied by exposing small samples to a clear night sky without having to perform full scale tests.     

Computer validation of scale model tests for building energy simulation

Dimensional analysis was used to derive the physical properties for a small-scale model building and its heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The model was built, and its thermal response was studied over a number of heating and cooling cycles. Temperature variation was recorded in the form of temperature/time plots. Experimental results showed the model to be capable of realistic behaviour. Detailed comparisons with full-scale response could not be made, since an imaginary prototype was assumed. Recent computer simulation, however, produced results analogous to those obtained from the model tests. This suggests that small-scale models can be used to quantitatively reproduce building energy response. Current efforts are being directed towards the modelling of an existing building, in which both air temperature and velocity will be measured. The aim is to validate small-scale modelling as a viable tool in building-energy research.     

Dimensions of the “people problem” in energy research and “the” factual basis of dispersed energy futures

Those of us advocating adaptive behavior in times of scarcity and change of resources need to be more aware of the roles we are playing and of the ideas that influence our actions. Some important dimensions of the “people problem” often appear in binary opposition: institutional constraints vs individual freedom, credible vs non-credible, tangible vs abstract, restricted vs global time perspective, specialist vs generalist, voluntary vs involuntary, and progress vs decline or status quo. Several of these dimensions were central to our understanding of two transitional mechanisms in California: the Residential Building Code and the exploration of the potential of dispersed electric generators. The “people problems” of energy reach beyond the technical-science problems, and beyond educating the little people in the value of efficiency, conservation, and the impending exhaustion of fossil fuels. Indeed, they are central to any compilation of the factual basis of dispersed energy futures. Experts and decision-makers need to look within themselves for an improved understanding of what constitutes “the” energy problem and, indeed, what constitutes “the” factual basis for energy planning.     

A joint probability density function of wind speed and direction for wind energy analysis

A very flexible joint probability density function of wind speed and direction is presented in this paper for use in wind energy analysis. A method that enables angular–linear distributions to be obtained with specified marginal distributions has been used for this purpose. For the marginal distribution of wind speed we use a singly truncated from below Normal–Weibull mixture distribution. The marginal distribution of wind direction comprises a finite mixture of von Mises distributions. The proposed model is applied in this paper to wind direction and wind speed hourly data recorded at several weather stations located in the Canary Islands (Spain). The suitability of the distributions is judged from the coefficient of determination R².

The conclusions reached are that the joint distribution proposed in this paper: (a) can represent unimodal, bimodal and bitangential wind speed frequency distributions, (b) takes into account the frequency of null winds, (c) represents the wind direction regimes in zones with several modes or prevailing wind directions, (d) takes into account the correlation between wind speeds and its directions. It can therefore be used in several tasks involved in the evaluation process of the wind resources available at a potential site. We also conclude that, in the case of the Canary Islands, the proposed model provides better fits in all the cases analysed than those obtained with the models used in the specialised literature on wind energy.     

高耗能企业模拟联营电价的确定

鉴于国家政策允许和鼓励发展的高耗能企业对国民经济的重要性和其用电特点，为了保证企业和电力公司的共同发展，提出了模拟联营方案计算电价的方法，确保利益的尽量合理化。     

Inventory announcements,jump dynamics,volatility and trading volume in U.S. energy futures markets

This paper applies nonparametric methods to identify jumps in daily futures prices and intraday jumps surrounding inventory announcements of crude oil, heating oil and natural gas contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The sample period of our intraday data covers January 1990 to January 2008. We have obtained several interesting empirical results. (1) Large volatility days are often associated with large jump components, and large jump components are often associated with the Energy Information Administration's inventory announcement dates. (2) The volatility jump component is less persistent than the continuous sample path component. (3) Volatility and trading volume are higher on days with a jump at the inventory announcement than on days without a jump at the announcement. Furthermore, the intraday volatility returns to normal faster following inventory announcements with jumps than after announcements without jumps.     

The stationary of energy consumption for Turkish disaggregate data by employing linear and nonlinear unit root tests

This study is the first attempt to investigate the stationary of energy consumption for Turkish disaggregates data by employing linear and non-linear unit root tests extending from 1970 to 2006. It is concluded that the linearity is rejected in 4 cases in 7 Turkish sectors. In addition, when LM (Lagrange multiplier) tests that account for at most two structural breaks are taken into account for residential, industrial and agricultural where energy consumption follow a linear behavior, the unit root null is rejected. This means that energy demand management policies designed to shrink energy consumption will instead have a transitory impact on the energy consumption and return it toward its original trend path. On the other hand, it’s concluded that the transportation, non-energy uses & other, final energy consumption and cycle & energy sector’s energy consumption are non-stationary which means that any shock to energy consumption is likely to be permanent and energy demand management policies will have a permanent impact on these sectors.     

Market clearing of joint energy and reserves auctions using augmented payment minimization

This paper presents the market clearing of joint energy and reserves auctions and its mathematical formulation, focusing on a possible implementation of the Payment Cost Minimization (PCM). It also discusses another key point in debate: whether market clearing algorithm should minimize offer costs or payment costs? An aggregated simultaneous market clearing approach is proposed for provision of ancillary services as well as energy, which is in the form of Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) formulation. In the MINLP formulation of the market clearing process, the objective function (Payment cost or offer cost) are optimized while meeting AC power flow constraints, system reserve requirements and lost opportunity cost (LOC) considerations. The model is applied to the IEEE 24-bus Reliability Test System (IEEE 24-bus RTS), and simulation studies are carried out to examine the effectiveness of each objective function.     

Copula-based joint distribution analysis of wind speed and wind direction: Wind energy development for Hong Kong

Accurate and reliable assessment of wind energy potential has important implication to the wind energy industry. Most previous studies on wind energy assessment focused solely on wind speed, whereas the dependence of wind energy on wind direction was much less considered and documented. In this paper, a copula-based method is proposed to better characterize the direction-related wind energy potential at six typical sites in Hong Kong. The joint probability density function (JPDF) of wind speed and wind direction is constructed by a series of copula models. It shows that Frank copula has the best performance to fit the JPDF at hilltop and offshore sites while Gumbel copula outperforms other models at urban sites. The derived JPDFs are applied to estimate the direction-related wind power density at the considered sites. The obtained maximum direction-related wind energy density varies from 41.3 W/m² at an urban site to 507.9 W/m² at a hilltop site. These outcomes are expected to facilitate accurate micro-site selection of wind turbines, thereby improving the economic benefits of wind farms in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the developed copula-based method provides useful references for further investigations regarding direction-related wind energy assessments at various terrain regions. Notably, the proposed copula-based method can also be applied to characterize the direction-related wind energy potential somewhere other than Hong Kong.     

南钢的能源管理系统与节能降耗

全厂能源管理系统(Energy management system,简称EMS)是一个集过监控、能源管理、能源调度为一体的公司级管控一体化计算机系统.EMS系统通过对设备的运行监控、能源计划安排、平衡预测和能源调度管理,能够保证连续稳定生产,保证南京钢铁联合有限公司的电力、煤气、水力、蒸汽、氧气、氮气和氩气等能源、介质供应;利用EMS系统能耗对标分析系统,可以促进节能降耗,降低南钢能源系统成本.EMS系统的建立对公司能源系统的统一调度、优化能源平衡、建立客观的能源系统技术指标评价体系和提高能源管理水平有十分明显的促进作用,并促进了二次能源的回收和利用,提高了能源使用效率.