The European Union as a Mediator in Israel-Palestine: Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge. EU Diplomacy Paper 01/2016

The European Union (EU) has played an important, yet inconsistent role in the Israel-Palestine conflict since the1980 Venice Declaration. This paper analyses how the EU’s role as a mediator has changed more recently in the Israel-Gaza conflict. Specifically, it examines how the ‘Concept on Strengthening EU Mediation and Dialogue Capacities’ adopted in 2009 and the creation of the European External Action Service and the High Representative by the Lisbon Treaty have changed the EU’s resources and strategies as a mediator as well as how these developments improved cooperation and coordination with other mediators. This analysis is done through a comparison of the EU’s role in the Israeli Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014. It is argued that the aforementioned changes made the EU a more capable mediator and facilitated internal coordination. However, these changes did not create more resources for the EU as a mediator, rather they changed how the EU used its resources.

Analysis of Lead-Acid batteries with a third-order dynamical model

Electrical energy storage is a really important issue nowadays. As electricity is not easy to be directly stored, it can be stored in other forms and converted back to electricity when needed. As a consequence, storage technologies for electricity can be classified by the form of storage, and in particular we focus on electrochemical energy storage systems, better known as electrochemical batteries. Largely the more widespread batteries are the Lead-Acid ones, in the two main types known as flooded and valve-regulated. Batteries need to be present in many important applications such as in renewable energy systems and in motor vehicles. Consequently, in order to simulate these complex electrical systems, reliable battery models are needed. Although there exist some models developed by experts of chemistry, they are too complex and not expressed in terms of electrical networks. Thus, they are not convenient for a practical use by electrical engineers, who need to interface these models with other electrical systems models, usually described by means of electrical circuits. There are many techniques available in literature by which a battery can be modeled. Starting from the Thevenin based electrical model, it can be adapted to be more reliable for Lead-Acid battery type, with the addition of a parasitic reaction branch and a parallel network. The third-order formulation of this model can be chosen, being a trustworthy general-purpose model, characterized by a good ratio between accuracy and complexity. Considering the equivalent circuit network, all the useful equations describing the battery model are discussed, and then implemented one by one in Matlab/Simulink. The model has been finally validated, and then used to simulate the battery behaviour in different typical conditions.