[en] Energy models play an increasing role in the ongoing energy transition processes either as tools for forecasting potential developments or for assessments of policy and market design options. In recent years, these models have increased in scope and scale and provide a reasonable representation of the energy supply side, technological aspects and general macroeconomic interactions. However, the representation of the demand side and consumer behavior has remained rather simplistic. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we review existing large-scale energy model approaches, namely bottom-up and top-down models, with respect to their demand-side representation. Second, we identify gaps in existing approaches and draft potential pathways to account for a more detailed demand-side and behavior representation in energy modeling.

[en] Highlights: • Building energy model biases in the WECC depend on the location/number of representative cities. • Using 1 station per IECC climate zone results in a mean absolute summer temperature bias of 4.0 °C. • Using 1 station per IECC zone can lead to a 20–40% overestimate of peak loads during summer/winter. • Using all available stations reduces the mean absolute load bias by a factor of 2.5. • Using 4 stations per IECC zone reduces both temperature/load biases and computational burden. - Abstract: Numerical building models are typically forced with weather data from a limited number of “representative cities” or weather stations representing different climate regions. The use of representative weather stations reduces computational costs, but often fails to capture spatial heterogeneity in weather that may be important for simulations aimed at understanding how building stocks respond to a changing climate. We quantify the potential reduction in temperature and load biases from using an increasing number of weather stations over the western U.S. Our novel approach is based on deriving temperature and load time series using incrementally more weather stations, ranging from 8 to roughly 150, to evaluate the ability to capture weather patterns across different seasons. Using 8 stations across the western U.S., one from each IECC climate zone, results in an average absolute summertime temperature bias of ~4.0 °C with respect to a high-resolution gridded dataset. The mean absolute bias drops to ~1.5 °C using all available weather stations. Temperature biases of this magnitude could translate to absolute summertime mean simulated load biases as high as 13.5%. Increasing the size of the domain over which biases are calculated reduces their magnitude as positive and negative biases may cancel out. Using 8 representative weather stations can lead to a 20–40% bias of peak building loads during both summer and winter, a significant error for capacity expansion planners who may use these types of simulations. Using weather stations close to population centers reduces both mean and peak load biases. This approach could be used by others designing aggregate building simulations to understand the sensitivity to their choice of weather stations used to drive the models.

[en] Our fundamental premise is that energy consumption at the household level is a key indicator of standard of living. We employ state-of-the-art panel cointegration techniques to evaluate the nature of the relationship between income measures and energy consumption measures for seven East Indian Ocean countries. The general finding is that income and household electricity consumption are not cointegrated. Given this finding, we conclude that standard of living measures that rely on income measures and do not include household-level energy consumption information will necessarily miss important indications of both levels and changes of standard of living

[en] All energetic aspects collected within the main topic 'Energy and life' are gathered in 14 volumes. Environmental questions were devoted special attention because of public concern. The congress resolved to promote clean technologies and renewable energies with less environmental impact but without forgetting profitability. Experts in energetic topics attended the Congress

No abstract available

[en] Local energy planning has become a common thing, particularly after the first oil shock in the year 1973. This kind of planning claims to follow an integrated approach, i.e. to treat not only the economic problems connected with the supply of energy, but also the environmental problems concerned and the questions related to the conservation of resources. In Styria, such ''integrated'' plans have emerged in more than 25 municipalities, so far. Most of these concepts - harmonized with the clearly defined goals and objectives of the province's energy and environmental policy - may be termed a success insofar, as the measures considered therein are already in the process of practical implementation. (author)

[en] This article discusses the global market for independent power projects and the increased competition and strategic alliances that are occurring to take advantage of the increasing demand. The topics of the article include the amount of involvement of US companies in the global market, the forces driving the market toward independent power, markets in the United Kingdom, North America, Turkey, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany, India, the former Eastern European countries, Asia and the Pacific nations, and niche markets

[en] A methodology was developed to incorporate newly approved incentives in California's 'performance-based ratemaking' system. The incentives are based on rewards or penalties based on two-year rolling averages of the annual customer minutes of interruptions (CMI) and other similar measures, excluding catastrophic events (but including storms). Historical frequency distributions are the foundations for these performance incentive indices. Because the method is based on the probability frequency distributions of these performance indices, application of the method results in the replacement of deterministic transmission planning criteria with criteria that are probabilistic. 1 ref., 3 tabs., 10 figs

[en] The US electric power industry is at a transitional stage on the way to full competition at the retail level. A fundamental difference between wholesale and retail competition is that, with the latter, the end user will have a choice of suppliers. Large electric customers, such as industrial manufacturers, have traditionally had only two choices: to purchase from the local franchise utility or to self-generate. With retail competition, however, these same customers will have not only have many choices of suppliers to compare against the self-generation option, but also will have a new alternative to consider - that of outsourcing their generating assets as a means of retaining effective control, but not necessarily ownership, of their electric supply. Outsourcing of generation assets means turning over complete or partial ownership of these assets to a third party, who then sells the electricity back to the customer at retail. This approach can be advantageous to a customer who wants to achieve one or more of the following benefits that are generally not available in the traditional ''make or buy'' paradigm: monetize (receive cash for) assets to pay down debt or redeploy into its core business; reduce operating and overhead costs; meet increasing power demand without making a significant capital expenditure; retain a significant degree of control over the operation of the assets, rather than turning its source of supply to a utility, independent generator, or power marketer; and move the assets off-balance sheet and off-credit as a means of improving its corporate financial position. Outsourcing of industrial generation, including most or all of the above benefits has already occurred successfully in a handful of cases, such as the James River and Stone Container mills discussed in this paper

[en] Opening of electricity markets can cause actual generation costs to be reflected in prices, which become more variable and tend to follow the patterns of load peaks. Generating electricity at peak times is expensive and therefore, there might be an opportunity for electricity storage systems to alleviate grid congestion. This paper explored the financial and technical performance of electricity storage when demand-side management (DSM) measures are in action at the same time. It presented an analysis that is based on scenarios for DSM implementation in the current level of the Greek market opening to competition. Three major storage technologies were used in the analysis for comparison. The initial load and wholesale price data sets were derived from the Greek Transmission System Operator, referring to the years 2004 and 2005 and were in the form of hourly values. The analysis showed that under the assumptions made and conditions posed, a substantial amount of DSM had only a small effect on storage profits for all technologies, as the maximization of the electricity discharged was achieved by all. 4 refs., 2 tabs., 3 figs