Technology strategies in the process of student retention and efficiency of academic management

This article discusses the application of Information and Communication Technologies and strategies for best practices in order to capture and maintain faculty students' attention. It is based on a case study of ten years, using a complete information system. This system, in addition to be considered an ERP, to support the activities of academic management, also has a strong component of SRM that provides support to academic and administrative activities. It describes the extent to which the presented system facilitates the interaction and communication between members of the academic community, using the Internet, with services available on the Web complementing them with email, SMS and CTI. Through a perception, backed by empirical analysis and results of investigations, it demonstrates how this type of practice may raise the level of satisfaction of the community. In particular, it is possible to combat failure at school, avoid that students leave their course before its completion and also that they recommend them to potential students. In addition, such a strategy also allows strong economies in the management of the institution, increasing its value. As future work, we present the new phase of the project towards implementation of Business Intelligence to optimize the management process, making it proactive. The technological vision that guides new developments to a construction based on Web services and procedural languages is also presented.

Energy and ancillary services joint market simulation

In order to develop a flexible simulator, a variety of models for Ancillary Services (AS) negotiation has been implemented in MASCEM – a multi-agent system competitive electricity markets simulator. In some of these models, the energy and the AS are addressed simultaneously while in other models they are addressed separately. This paper presents an energy and ancillary services joint market simulation. This paper proposes a deterministic approach for solving the energy and ancillary services joint market. A case study based on the dispatch of Regulation Down, Regulation Up, Spinning Reserve, and Non-Spinning Reserve services is used to demonstrate that the use of the developed methodology is suitable for solving this kind of optimization problem. The presented case study is based on CAISO real AS market data considers fifteen bids.

Smart Grid Market Using Joint Energy and Ancillary Services Bids

The power systems operation in the smart grid context increases significantly the complexity of their management. New approaches for ancillary services procurement are essential to ensure the operation of electric power systems with appropriate levels of stability, safety, quality, equity and competitiveness. These approaches should include market mechanisms which allow the participation of small and medium distributed energy resources players in a competitive market environment. In this paper, an energy and ancillary services joint market model used by an aggregator is proposed, considering bids of several types of distributed energy resources. In order to improve economic efficiency in the market, ancillary services cascading market mechanism is also considered in the model. The proposed model is included in MASCEM – a multi-agent system electricity market simulator. A case study considering a distribution network with high penetration of distributed energy resources is presented.