Modern Portfolio Theory Applied to Electricity Resource Planning

To meet electricity demand, electric utilities develop growth strategies for generation, transmission, and distributions systems. For a long time those strategies have been developed by applying least-cost methodology, in which the cheapest stand-alone resources are simply added, instead of analyzing complete portfolios. As a consequence, least-cost methodology is biased in favor of fossil fuel-based technologies, completely ignoring the benefits of adding non-fossil fuel technologies to generation portfolios, especially renewable energies. For this reason, this thesis introduces modern portfolio theory (MPT) to gain a more profound insight into a generation portfolio’s performance using generation cost and risk metrics. We discuss all necessary assumptions and modifications to this finance technique for its application within power systems planning, and we present a real case of analysis. Finally, the results of this thesis are summarized, pointing out the main benefits and the scope of this new tool in the context of electricity generation planning.

Application of the latency insertion method (LIM) to the analysis of large circuit interconnect networks

The focus of this research is to explore the applications of the finite difference formulation based on the latency insertion method (LIM) to the analysis of circuit interconnects. Special attention is devoted to addressing the issues that arise in very large networks such as on-chip signal and power distribution networks. We demonstrate that the LIM has the power and flexibility to handle various types of analysis required at different stages of circuit design. The LIM is particularly suitable for simulations of very large scale linear networks and can significantly outperform conventional circuit solvers (such as SPICE).