Analysis and Future Prospects for Cross-border Congestion Management Methods for the European Electricity Market

This paper presents an analysis of current and potential cross-border congestion management methods for the EU electricity market. Many currently used techniques are reported and the main aspects of possible future are presented. The main steps of the newly established coordinated auction technique will be reported and an example of a real case for the South European Region will be implemented. Moreover, in order to eliminate loop flows, avoid congestions at the day ahead stage and increase the total transfer capacity of the south UCTE region (countries Greece, Albania and FYROM), it will be shown that Flexible Ac Transmission Systems technology can help market players to get access to more transfer capacity for their transactions, while security margins are being maintained.     

The economic effects of Rhyzopertha dominica on rice quality: Objective and subjective measures

Infestations of internal feeders such as Rhyzopertha dominica cause damage to stored grains, including rice. Few studies, though, have measured the economic effects of that damage. In this study, samples of rough long grain rice were infested with R. dominica at several rates (0, 20, and 200 adults/kg). The effects of these infestations on rice quality and quantity were measured objectively using color and milling yield. They were also measured subjectively with a blind taste/sensory consumer taste test and a non-hypothetical auction measuring consumer willingness to pay for the different qualities of rice.The objective quantity and value loss ranged from 2% for lightly-infested rice to 3.5% for heavily-infested rice. For subjective effects, results of the auction suggested that participants on average were willing to pay only a small premium for less infested rice. This test confirmed results of the sensory taste panel, which showed that participants on average detected very little difference among rice samples with alternative levels of infestation. However, when they were given extra information verifying that rice with lower infestation levels was higher quality or that the rice was stored using IPM methods, the potential price increase from reducing R. dominica infestation could range from $0.44/kg. to $0.79/kg., plus a $0.13/kg. premium for using IPM storage methods. However, results suggest that in order to capture that value rice sellers must be able to convey information about quality and storage attributes to consumers in a way that is relevant and trustworthy.     

A lesson from Argentina: Setting transmission tolls in a competitive auction is much better than regulating them

There are at least two procedures for setting the tolls paid by power line users. One consists of regulating them in a standard process. The other, which is used in Argentina, involves auctioning the lines to the lowest toll. In this paper we show that an auction yields higher expected social welfare if n ≥ 2 bid. Expected social welfare is even higher if, as in Argentina, those who benefit from the line can also bid and build. Moreover, when the social welfare is utilitarian, an auction beats regulation even when the regulator can perfectly audit costs ex post.We describe and examine the auction of the fourth Comahue transmission line in Argentina. Assuming that the regulator's information about costs is similar to the information held by the industry, the model suggests that had tolls been regulated, they would have been at least 61% higher.     

Contract market power and its impact on the efficiency of the electricity sector

This paper analyzes the pro-competitive effects of financial long-term contracts in oligopolistic electricity markets. This is done in a model that incorporates the main features of the industry: non-storable production, time-varying price-elastic demand, and sequential investment and production decisions. The paper considers contracts for difference that have as reference price the average spot price. Assuming that the spot market coordinator sets competitive prices, the paper shows that installed capacity increases with the quantity of energy contracted, reaching the welfare-maximizing capacity when energy contracted equals this same level. Next, the paper studies the case where the quantity of energy contracted is endogenous and contracts are traded before capacity decisions are taken. Regarding purchasers of contracts, two polar cases are considered: either they are price-taker speculators or they are an aggregation of consumers that auctions a long (buy) contract for a given energy quantity. In the former case the strike price equals the reference price, i.e., arbitrage is perfect, and the quantity of energy contracted falls short of the efficient level. In turn, in the latter case, the strike price equals the average efficient spot price. Moreover, an aggregation of all consumers would choose to auction the social optimum quantity.     

MyAds: A system for adaptive pervasive advertisements

In this paper we show how pervasive technologies can be employed on a public-display advertisement scenario to enable behavioral self-adaptation of content. We show this through MyAds, a system capable of exploiting pervasive technologies to autonomously adapt the advertisement process to the trends of interests detected among the audience in a venue. After describing the rationale, the architecture and the prototype of MyAds, we describe the advantages brought by the use of such a system, in terms of impact on the audience and economic efficiency. The comparison of MyAds performances with different advertisement selection techniques confirms the validity of our advertisement model, and our prototype in particular, as a means for maximising product awareness in an audience and for enhancing economic efficiency.     

Auction-based crowdsourcing supporting skill management

Crowdsourcing is a promising approach for enterprises to maintain a flexible workforce that is able to solve parts of business processes formerly processed in-house. Companies perceive crowdsourcing as a concept that allows receiving solutions quickly and at little cost. Similar to cloud computing where computing power is provided on demand, the crowd promises a flexible on-demand workforce. However, businesses realize that these benefits entail a lack of quality control. The main difference compared to traditional approaches in business process execution is that tasks or activities cannot be directly assigned to employees but are posted to the crowdsourcing platform. Its members can choose deliberately which tasks to book and work on. In fact, crowdsourcing is heavily affected by the loose-coupling of workers to crowdsourcers and the dynamics of the environment. Hence, it remains a major challenge to guarantee high-quality processing of tasks within the prescribed time limit. A further obstacle for adoption of crowdsourcing in enterprises is the fact that it is hard to specify a fair monetary reward in advance. The concepts introduced in this work allow to smoothly integrate new workers, to keep them motivated, and to help them develop and improve skills needed in the system. We present a crowdsourcing marketplace that matches complex tasks, requiring multiple skills, to suitable workers. The key to ensuring high quality lies in skilled members whose capabilities can be estimated correctly. To that end, we present auction mechanisms that help to correctly estimate workers and to evolve skills that are needed in the system. Crowdsourcers do not need to predefine exact prices but only maximum prices they are willing to pay since the actual rewards for tasks are formed by supply and demand. Extensive experiments show that our approach leads to improved crowdsourcing, in most cases.     

基于灰色理论的拍卖预测算法研究

基于网上拍卖结果难以预测,提出一种基于灰色理论的拍卖预测算法,利用连续的灰色微分方程GM（1,1）模型,对拍卖结果进行预测．基于固定历史数据和移动历史数据分别与简单指数函数预测算法和时间序列预测算法使用平均残差（ARE）进行比较,结果显示该方法不但所使用的数据较少也具有较高的准确性．表明该方法可以有效地预测拍卖结果．     

Simulating digital dividend auctions: Service neutrality versus dedicated licences

The award of the digital dividend can consolidate auctions as the preferred mechanism for spectrum allocation. Knowing in advance an estimate of what the results of an auction with these characteristics could be would be unquestionably useful for those in charge of designing the process, even if at the end another method such as a beauty contest is chosen. This article provides a simulation of a digital dividend auction in a major-type European country. In one of the scenarios, the spectrum is not pre-allocated to any service in particular (service neutrality) while in the remaining four, blocks of spectrum are pre-allocated to DTT, mobile multimedia and mobile broadband communications. The results of the simulations reveal that the service neutrality scenario maximizes revenues for the seller and that, in general, DTT operators would seem to have fewer opportunities as the spectrum packaging is less protective for them.     

Policy mix of renewable portfolio standards,feed-in tariffs,and auctions in South Korea: Are three better than one?

This study examines the effects of policy mix supporting electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) in South Korea. South Korea relies on a renewable portfolio standard as the main support scheme along with a feed-in tariff and long-term supply contract auctions as complementary schemes to support RES-E. This study investigates whether there is synergy among RES-E support policies. It also investigates how the policy mix affects RES-E markets. Although this study only focuses on a particular case of Korea, a policy mix generally can be an effective way to overcome the drawbacks of a single policy instrument in supporting RES-E.