Browsing by Subject "Electricity"
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Item An analysis of Latin America’s electricity market restructuring efforts : the role of energy regulators, performance, and competition(2009-12) Baca Bañuelos, Miguel Alejandro; Spence, David B.; Foss, MichelleThis thesis reviews restructuring efforts of the electricity market in Latin America. The work first examines the drivers that have encouraged Latin American countries to restructure their power markets, going from government-held monopolies to fully privatized systems. Then a general conceptual theory is presented to describe the main differences between restructuring and privatization, and antitrust theory. Next, five countries are selected due to their leadership role in electric reforms in the region as well as their economic weight. Then a complete description of their power generation and electricity consumption is described as well as their experiences undergone before and after electricity restructuring. A summary section is presented by benchmarking the five countries and identifying the common issues faced that will help others plan better electric systems. Then, an analysis of their internal market competition is presented, analyzing the impact of electricity costs and rates. Finally, the last portion of this thesis concludes by exploring future trends in market integration programs as well as the challenges for sustainable economic growth, environmental impacts, and cooperation.Item Climate action strategies for the University of Texas at Austin(2010-05) Hernandez, Marinoelle; Eaton, David J.; Walker, Jim H.This report analyzes the current greenhouse gas emissions inventory for The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), reviews the carbon reduction strategies being implemented at UT-Austin and other peer institutions, and offers recommendations for strategies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions at UT-Austin in the future.Item Electric vehicles and public charging infrastructure : impediments and opportunities for success in the United States(2012-05) Borden, Eric Joshua; Boske, Leigh B.; Duncan, RogerToday’s debate regarding the United States (U.S.) transportation sector has never been more important. As similar discussions embroil electricity generation, one can see the powerful forces of the status-quo pitted against growing momentum behind alternatives. The electric vehicle (EV) finds itself somewhere in the middle of the debate, as a possible alternative to the conventional vehicle (CV). As demonstrated in this report, electric vehicles are neither new nor technologically infeasible. Current circumstances have initiated what appears to be a revival of the EV – this includes years of high oil prices, geopolitical instability, and growing awareness of environmental concerns resulting from CV usage. Nevertheless, impediments remain. One of the most important is the prospect of building public charging infrastructure to allow drivers to use an EV like their conventional vehicle, for both long and short distances. Public charging infrastructure, however, cannot be built without some critical mass of EV’s on the road to use them – otherwise they are not economically feasible. This report analyzes various facets of both EV’s and public charging infrastructure to give the reader a clear understanding of the complex criteria that must be understood to assess EV’s in the United States. Texas is given special consideration as a case study in this report, particularly the Austin area where public charging infrastructure for EV’s is currently being implemented. Through a detailed analysis of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, as well as the United States transportation system, this report seeks to reach conclusions over the role EV’s and public charging infrastructure should play in the future U.S. transportation system.Item Energy transitions on the Hawaiian Islands : water resources implications for Hawaii's electrical power system(2014-08) Dawes, Colleen Marie; Pierce, Suzanne Alise, 1969-; King, Carey; Beach, FredImported fossil fuels currently supply over 90% of the Hawaiian Islands' annual consumed electricity, the majority of which is produced by petroleum-fired power plants. The state of Hawaii has a goal to dramatically reduce this reliance on imports and achieve 30% locally sourced, renewable power use by 2030. This goal signals an energy transition for the state that is achievable through decommissioning, repurposing and new development in power generating technologies and infrastructure. In addition to dependencies on imports and fossil fuels, Hawaii's electrical industry is also currently the largest water user in the state of Hawaii with over 75% of all surface water and groundwater withdrawals attributed to thermoelectric generation and cooling. Transitions in Hawaii's fuel mix from a petroleum dominant mix to renewable fuel for power generation could have significant impacts on water use and availability: a small change in energy resources could mean significant changes in water use. Integrated planning and management for these two resources is needed. A successful energy transition for Hawaii in the next 15 years will involve precise planning, and strategic decision-making for both energy and water. This research adopts a systems view to evaluate energy-water interdependencies within Hawaii's electrical system, comparing the current fuel mix and projections for energy trends on the islands with the continental United States. A power plant database built from Hawaii-specific utility-scale data combined with national averages for thermoelectric water use reported in the literature provide an overview of Hawaii’s current electrical sector and its water use. This snapshot identifies critical resource management needs and reveals disparities between the electrically detached islands. Scenario analysis of projected change in Hawaii’s electrical sector is used to assess the implications for water use intensity across a range of locally sourced power capacity and generation options. Results indicate that, because it displaces petroleum power production, increases in renewable energies on Hawaii will produce substantial water savings, especially in total operational water withdrawals.Item Essays on Energy and Regulatory Compliance(2012-10-19) Cancho Diez, CesarThis dissertation contains two essays on the analysis of market imperfections. In the first essay, I empirically test whether in a three-level hierarchy with asymmetries of information, more competition among intermediaries leads to more deception against the principal. In this setting, intermediaries supervise agents by delegation of the principal, and compete among themselves to provide supervision services to the agents. They cannot be perfectly monitored, therefore allowing them to manipulate supervision results in favor of the agents, and potentially leading to less than optimal outcomes for the principal. Using inspection-level data from the vehicular inspection program in Atlanta, I test for the existence of inspection deception (false positives), and whether this incidence is a function of the number of local competitors by station. I estimate the incidence of the most common form of false positives (clean piping) to be 9% of the passing inspections during the sample period. Moreover, the incidence of clean piping -- passing results of a different vehicle fraudulently applied to a failing vehicle -- per station increases by 0.7% with one more competitor within a 0.5 mile radius. These results are consistent with the presence of more competitors exacerbating the perverse incentives introduced by competition under this setting. In the second essay, we test whether electricity consumption by industrial and commercial customers responds to real-time prices after these firms sign-up for prices linked to the electricity wholesale market price. In principle, time-varying prices (TVP) can mitigate market power in wholesale markets and promote the integration of intermittent generation sources such as wind and solar power. However, little is known about the prevalence of TVP, especially in deregulated retail markets where customers can choose whether to adopt TVP, and how these firms change their consumption after signing up for this type of tariff. We study firm-level data on commercial and industrial customers in Texas, and estimate the magnitude of demand responsiveness using demand equations that consider the restrictions imposed by the microeconomic theory. We find a meaningful level of take-up of TVP ? in some sectors more than one-quarter of customers signed up for TVP. Nevertheless, the estimated price responsiveness of consumption is still small. Estimations by size and by type of industry show that own price elasticities are in most cases below 0.01 in absolute value. In the only cases that own price elasticities reach 0.02 in absolute value, the magnitude of demand response compared to the aggregate demand is negligible.Item Essays on regulatory impact in electricity and internet markets(2014-05) Roderick, Thomas Edward; Ryan, Stephen (Stephen P.)This dissertation details regulation's impact in networked markets, notably in deregulated electricity and internet service markets. These markets represent basic infrastructure in the modern economy; their innate networked structures make for rich fields of economic research on regulatory impact. The first chapter models deregulated electricity industries with a focus on the Texas market. Optimal economic benchmarks are considered for markets with regulated delivery and interrelated network costs. Using a model of regulator, consumer, and firm interaction, I determine the efficiency of the current rate formalization compared to Ramsey-Boiteux prices and two-part tariffs. I find within Texas's market increases to generator surplus up to 55% of subsidies could be achieved under Ramsey-Boiteux pricing or two-part tariffs, respectively. The second chapter presents a framework to analyze dynamic processes and long-run outcomes in two-sided markets, specifically dynamic platform and firm investment incentives within the internet-service platform/content provision market. I use the Ericson-Pakes framework applied within a platform that chooses fees on either side of its two-sided market. This chapter determines the impact of network neutrality on platform investment incentives, specifically whether to improve the platform. I use a parameterized calibration from engineering reports and current ISP literature to determine welfare outcomes and industry behavior under network neutral and non-neutral regimes. My final chapter explores retail firm failure within the deregulated Texas retail electricity market. This chapter investigates determinants of retail electric firm failures using duration analysis frameworks. In particular, this chapter investigates the impact of these determinants on firms with extant experience versus unsophisticated entrants. Understanding these determinants is an important component in evaluating whether deregulation achieves the impetus of competitive electricity market restructuring. Knowing which economic events decrease a market's competitiveness helps regulators to effectively evaluate policy implementations. I find that experience does benefit a firm's duration, but generally that benefit assists firm duration in an adverse macroeconomic environment rather than in response to adverse market conditions such as higher wholesale prices or increased transmission congestion. Additionally, I find evidence that within the Texas market entering earlier results in a longer likelihood of duration.Item Essays on the effects of government intervention in Texas' electricity market and the health insurance markets in Missouri and Oklahoma(2015-12) McKearin, Tobin Knowles; Geruso, Michael; Abrevaya, Jason; Oettinger, Gerald S; Zarnikau, Jay; Wozny, Nathan NThis public economics dissertation examines the effects resulting from government intervention in the electricity and health insurance markets. The first chapter analyzes the impact on residential electricity prices by studying a once regulated market in which government regulators withdrew from in hopes of allowing a free and competitive market to flourish. The second chapter analyzes the resulting effects on employment and other forms of health insurance that occur when the government tightens the income limits to qualify for Medicaid. The third and final chapter studies employment, health insurance, health, and emergency room usage effects when the government gives subsidies to employers providing health insurance to their employees.Item San Antonio's energy future(2006-08) Pearson, Eli Richard; Butler, Kent S.As demand for electricity increases, utilities turn to demand-side or supply-side responses in order to reduce demand or add supply to their energy portfolio. CPS Energy, a municipal utility owned by the City of San Antonio, Texas, recently broke ground on a new coal plant to meet rising demand for electricity. This report examines the public debate that accompanied the proposal and investigates the possibilities of other solutions for utilities to meet demand. Two case studies, overviews of the utilities in Austin, Texas, and Sacramento, California, provide insight into the considerations for utilities with renewable energy and demand-side management (DSM) in their energy portfolio. This professional report will evaluate these case studies and apply lessons learned to the case of CPS Energy in San Antonio, and report on the options available to utilities considering conventional supply-side additions and demand-side management.Item The solar energy consumer agent decision (SECAD) model : addressing complexity through GIS-integrated agent-based modeling(2014-05) Robinson, Scott Austen; Rai, Varun; Arima, Eugenio; Zarnikau, JayThis thesis presents a step-by-step implementation of the Solar Energy Consumer Agent Decision (SECAD) model: an empirically-grounded multi-agent model of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption with an integrated geospatial topology. Solar PV diffusion is a complex system with geographic heterogeneity, uncertain information, high financial risk, and important social interaction and feedback effects between consumers. A key limitation for agentbased models in human socio-technical systems is the integration of empirical patterns in the model structure, initialization, and validation efforts. This limitation is addressed though highly granular and interlocking data-streams from the geographic, social network, financial, demographic, and decision-making process of real households in the study. The fitted and validation model is used to simulate implementation of potential policies to inform decision-makers: i) Targeted informational dissemination campaigns, ii) Tiered rebates, iii) Locational pricing, and iv) Alternative rebate schedules. Informational campaigns can increase cumulative installations by as much as 12%, but vary greatly in their effectiveness based on which agents are targeted. Simulations suggest that by lowering the cost barrier to lower wealth households through a slightly higher rebate (+$0.25/Watt), the mean difference in wealth between solar adopters and non adopters could be reduced by 22.6%. Locational pricing can allow the utility more control over diffusion patterns with regard to load pockets--a $0.25 higher offering increased the percentage of adopters in the target area from less than 1% to over 10%. Relative to flatter rebate schedules, sharply decreasing schedules are effective in terms of motivating adoption but inefficient in small markets. It is our hope that this work will provide a working example for other agent-based models of human socio-technical systems as well as provide insight into the likely outcomes of novel policy-levers such as those described above.Item A techno-economic plant- and grid-level assessment of flexible CO2 capture(2012-08) Cohen, Stuart Michael, 1984-; Rochelle, Gary T.; Webber, Michael E., 1971-; Baldick, Ross; Schmidt, Philip S.; Bickel, EricCarbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and sequestration (CCS) at fossil-fueled power plants is a critical technology for CO₂ emissions mitigation during the transition to a sustainable energy system. Post-combustion amine scrubbing is a relatively mature CO₂ capture technology, but barriers to implementation include high capital costs and energy requirements that reduce net power output by 20-30%. Capture energy requirements are typically assumed constant, but work investigates whether flexibly operating amine scrubbing systems in response to electricity market conditions can add value to CO₂ capture facilities while maintaining environmental benefits. Two versatile optimization models have been created to study the electricity system implications of flexible CO₂ capture. One model assesses the value of flexible capture at a single facility in response to volatile electricity prices, while the other represents a full electricity system to study the ability of flexible capture to meet electricity demand and reliability (ancillary) service requirements. Price-responsive flexible CO₂ capture has limited value at market conditions that justify CO₂ capture investments. Solvent storage can add value for price arbitrage by allowing flexible operation without additional CO₂ emissions, but only with favorable capital costs. The primary advantage of flexible CO₂ capture is an increased ability to provide grid reliability services and improve grid resiliency at minimum and maximum electricity demand. Flexibility mitigates capacity shortages because capture energy requirements need not be replaced, and variable capture at low demand helps respond to intermittent renewable generation.Item The future of electricity prices in Mexico(2016-05) Piazzesi di Vallimosa Zorrilla, Paolo; Spence, David B.; Pierce, Suzanne; Fisher, William L.Mexico passed an historic energy reform in 2014. In the electric sector, the previously vertically integrated state-owned company is now open to competition from private companies in the generation and commercialization of electricity, and a new wholesale electricity market was created. The reform was passed by the PRI administration shortly after returning to power, and its stated goal is to guarantee Mexico’s energy security. The administration predicts that competition and restructuring will result in a more efficient market and lower overall electricity prices for consumer. However, the final outcome is not yet clear. Factors including plummeting oil prices, rushed restructuring of state companies and regulators, a new wholesale market with little initial private participation, and high risks in new electricity contracts create an uncertain future for the price of electricity in Mexico. This document begins with an overview of the energy reform as it relates to the electric sector, describing the restructuring of state actors and their new responsibilities, the newly created wholesale electricity market, and important features of the reform including distributed generation and clean energy certificates. It also includes the relevant legal changes for new private investment in the electric sector. It then analyzes historical trends on the price of electricity, focusing on medium and high voltage rates which do not benefit from government subsidies. It also analyzes trends in the price of natural gas, the main indicator for generation costs in Mexico. These analyses attempt to make a prediction on the medium-term price of electricity in the new wholesale market. Case studies are included for reforms in Argentina and Chile, drawing political and technological lessons to be applied to the Mexican case. The thesis concludes that the energy reform was much needed and long overdue, although the political pressure to enact it before the presidential term is over has led to an imperfect implementation. While there has been no private investment in large capacity plants, investment in renewable energy has been an unexpected success of the reform.