Least-Cost Planning and electricity industry reform in Australia

Least-Cost Planning played a key role in the development of the energy efficiency and renewable energy industries in the USA, It has not been widely used elsewhere, largely due to differences in other nations' regulatory environments and the emergence of competitive markets as the dominant paradigm for electricity planning, Least-Cost Planning, however may over valuable insights for creating regulatory framework for competitive electricity markers. This paper examines some lessons which may be extracted from an analysis of the Least-Cost Planning experience in the USA and suggests how these lessons might prove beneficial in guiding Australia's electricity industry reform, This analysis demonstrates how market-based reforms may be flawed if they ignore the history of previous reform processes.

Masculine, feminine or neutral? In-company equal opportunities policies in Irish and French MNC retailing

Several problematic aspects of women's paid employment - e.g. low pay and lack of promotional opportunities - are exacerbated by the segregation of women and men into different occupations. In this article, the potential of in-store equal opportunities policies to break down such gender segregation will be explored, through consideration of the existence and implementation of these policies in twenty-two multinational retail companies in Dublin and Paris. It will be argued that, with one notable exception, the instore equal opportunities policies are effectively neutralized, and furthermore are neutralized in nationally specific ways which can be related to differences between France and Ireland in the organization of labour-market regulation and in women's labour-force participation (LFP). The case-study findings also suggest that the 'country' variable has a stronger effect on the existence and implementation of these policies than the extent of a shop's links to an overseas headquarters. The findings of this study have implications for both the equity of women's incorporation into the paid labour force and understanding of aspects of HRM in branches of multinational companies.

The impact of size and age of the company on assessing financial risk

Textiles and tourism sectors are two important sectors in Portuguese economy. Its high exposure to both internal and international economy volatility transform the companies operating in these economic sectors especially vulnerable to recent economic crises in Portugal and European Union. The objective of this paper is to evaluate and understand the impact of size and age on the financial health of textile and tourism companies, measured by economic indices. An empirical based model is proposed. Its implications are derived and tested on a sample of 4061 Portuguese companies from textile and tourism sector, during the period 2005-2009. The results conclude that age has a stronger impact on the risk of failure than size. Whereas the effect of age is generally positive regarding the financial health of the company, the effect of size is less clear and depends on the age of the company.

Economic analysis of occupational risk prevention: a case study in a textile company

Work accidents affect business and society as a whole. Fewer accidents mean fewer sick leaves, which results in lower costs and less disruption in the production process, with clear advantages for the employer. But workers and their households bear also a significant burden following a work accident, only partially compen-sated by insurance systems. Furthermore, the consequences of work accidents to the State and Society need also to be considered. When an organization performs an integrated risk analysis in evaluating its Occupational Health and Safety Management System, several steps are suggested to address the identified risk situations. Namely, to avoid risks, a series of preventive measures are identified. The organization should make a detailed analysis of the monetary impact (positive or negative) for the organization of each of the measures considered. Particularly, it is also important to consider the impact of each measure on society, involving an adequate eco-nomic cost-benefit analysis. In the present paper, a case study in a textile finishing company is presented. The study concentrates on the dyeing and printing sections. For each of the potential risks, several preventive measures have been identified and the corresponding costs and benefits have been estimated. Subsequently, the Benefit/Cost ratio (B/C) of these measures has been calculated, both in financial terms (from the organisa-tion’s perspective) and in economic terms (including the benefits for the worker and for the Society). Results show that, while the financial analysis in terms of the company does not justify the preventive measures, when the externalities are taken into account, the B/C ratio increases significantly and investments are fully justified.

The impact of size and age of the company on assessing financial risk.

Textiles and tourism sectors are two important sectors in Portuguese economy. Its high exposure to both internal and international economy volatility transform the companies operating in these economic sectors especially vulnerable to recent economic crises in Portugal and European Union. The objective of this paper is to evaluate and understand the impact of size and age on the financial health of textile and tourism companies, measured by economic indices. An empirical based model is proposed. Its implications are derived and tested on a sample of 4061 Portuguese companies from textile and tourism sector, during the period 2005-2009. The results conclude that age has a stronger impact on the risk of failure than size. Whereas the effect of age is generally positive regarding the financial health of the company, the effect of size is less clear and depends on the age of the company.

(Virtual) Agents for running electricity markets

This paper describes a multi-agent based simulation (MABS) framework to construct an artificial electric power market populated with learning agents. The artificial market, named TEMMAS (The Electricity Market Multi-Agent Simulator), explores the integration of two design constructs: (i) the specification of the environmental physical market properties and (ii) the specification of the decision-making (deliberative) and reactive agents. TEMMAS is materialized in an experimental setup involving distinct power generator companies that operate in the market and search for the trading strategies that best exploit their generating units' resources. The experimental results show a coherent market behavior that emerges from the overall simulated environment.

Sistemas de abastecimento de água e saneamento básico

O presente relatório de estágio enquadra-se no âmbito do Trabalho Final de Mestrado (TFM) do curso de Engenharia Civil, área de especialização de Hidráulica, do Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, e baseia-se na temática dos sistemas de abastecimento de água e drenagem de águas residuais. O estágio, intitulado de “Sistemas de Abastecimento de Agua e Saneamento Básico”, decorreu numa empresa de consultaria de engenharia denominada ENGIDRO – Estudos de Engenharia, Lda., vocacionada para a realização de estudos e projectos na área de Hidráulica, com particular incidência na Hidráulica Urbana e Saneamento Básico. O estágio iniciou-se com um adequado enquadramento profissional na empresa e incidiu principalmente no desenvolvimento de trabalhos de concepção e dimensionamento, a nível de projectos de execução, de sistemas de abastecimento de água e de saneamento básico, para 21 localidades da província de Lunda Sul, em Angola, com prestação de serviços para o Governo Provincial de Lunda Sul – Direcção Provincial da Energia e Aguas, juntamente com empresa CENGA – Consultores de Engenharia de Angola, S.A. Na prestação de serviços à entidade contratante foram efectuados trabalhos de campo, que consistiram principalmente em reconhecimentos do terreno, levantamentos topográficos e recolha de informação relevante sobre elementos condicionantes dos projectos (origens e disponibilidades de água, natureza e declive dos terrenos, tipos de infra-estruturas locais) e trabalhos de gabinete para compilação e análise da informação recolhida na elaboração dos projectos de execução, incluindo pecas desenhadas (desenhos pormenorizados) e peças escritas (memórias descritivas e justificativas, medições e orçamentos). Sendo os projectos destinados a aglomerados populacionais pouco desenvolvidos e com carências e condicionantes de diversa ordem (falta de energia eléctrica, de acessos, de telecomunicações, de meios técnicos e materiais, entre outros), prestou-se especial atenção aos aspectos da concepção, privilegiando soluções de baixa tecnologia, mais fáceis de explorar e manter com os recursos locais disponíveis.

Short-term electricity prices forecasting in a competitive market by a hybrid PSO-ANFIS approach

In this paper, a novel hybrid approach is proposed for electricity prices forecasting in a competitive market, considering a time horizon of 1 week. The proposed approach is based on the combination of particle swarm optimization and adaptive-network based fuzzy inference system. Results from a case study based on the electricity market of mainland Spain are presented. A thorough comparison is carried out, taking into account the results of previous publications, to demonstrate its effectiveness regarding forecasting accuracy and computation time. Finally, conclusions are duly drawn. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Construção de vantagens competitivas nas estratégias de internacionalização: estudo do caso da EFACEC

Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto Politécnico do Porto para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Gestão das Organizações, Ramo de Gestão de Empresas Orientador: Professor Doutor Orlando Manuel Martins Marques de Lima Rua

Determination of electricity consumers’ load profiles via weighted evidence accumulation clustering using subsampling

With the electricity market liberalization, the distribution and retail companies are looking for better market strategies based on adequate information upon the consumption patterns of its electricity consumers. A fair insight on the consumers’ behavior will permit the definition of specific contract aspects based on the different consumption patterns. In order to form the different consumers’ classes, and find a set of representative consumption patterns we use electricity consumption data from a utility client’s database and two approaches: Two-step clustering algorithm and the WEACS approach based on evidence accumulation (EAC) for combining partitions in a clustering ensemble. While EAC uses a voting mechanism to produce a co-association matrix based on the pairwise associations obtained from N partitions and where each partition has equal weight in the combination process, the WEACS approach uses subsampling and weights differently the partitions. As a complementary step to the WEACS approach, we combine the partitions obtained in the WEACS approach with the ALL clustering ensemble construction method and we use the Ward Link algorithm to obtain the final data partition. The characterization of the obtained consumers’ clusters was performed using the C5.0 classification algorithm. Experiment results showed that the WEACS approach leads to better results than many other clustering approaches.

A congestion management and transmission price simulator for competitive electricity markets

In a liberalized electricity market, the Transmission System Operator (TSO) plays a crucial role in power system operation. Among many other tasks, TSO detects congestion situations and allocates the payments of electricity transmission. This paper presents a software tool for congestion management and transmission price determination in electricity markets. The congestion management is based on a reformulated Optimal Power Flow (OPF), whose main goal is to obtain a feasible solution for the re-dispatch minimizing the changes in the dispatch proposed by the market operator. The transmission price computation considers the physical impact caused by the market agents in the transmission network. The final tariff includes existing system costs and also costs due to the initial congestion situation and losses costs. The paper includes a case study for the IEEE 30 bus power system.