Price and Environment in Electricity Restructuring

One purpose of electricity restructuring is to create a market in which prices reflect costs to which both generators and consumers may respond efficiently. Yet in many jurisdictions, spot prices may be quite volatile, and both consumers and generators of electricity have made it clear that they do not prices that are highly volatile. This paper examines price plans that have been and might be used in restructured electricity markets assessing their ability to face consumers with efficient prices at the margin but to minimize their exposure to volatility, considering the welfare losses that may be associated with them. It notes that electricity markets are necessarily artificial and that few have managed to create price plans that seem to improve on the efficiency of pre-restructuring prices. Moreover in the California market, the operation of a separate market for air pollution emissions gave rise to emission prices far above reasonable estimates of environmental harm, further exacerbating wholesale price fluctuations in 2000. Solutions to these problems are explored.electric utilities, electricity restructuring, air pollution, spot market, price volatility, price structure, Ontario

The Price Isn't Right: The Need for Reform in Consumer Electricity Pricing

Electricity prices should fully link the consumer price to peak-period generation costs, environmental costs and the high cost of new generation, according to an expert analysis released today by the C.D. Howe Institute. The author says such pricing reform is required to reduce both financial and electrical stress on the system and help prepare Ontario – and other provinces – for the rising costs of new generation.Economic Growth and Innovation, electricity pricing, Province of Ontario, conservation, environmental cost, real-time pricing

Electricity Restructuring and Regulation in the Provinces: Ontario and Beyond

Competitive electricity markets are artificial markets with extensive rules for all participants arising from the complex interconnections of the electricity network. Governments or regulatory agencies oversee the market design process and the operation and maintenance of the market, so market design is necessarily a political process. The conceptual design of the market must recognise the political forces that will operate on the market design process so that the political process will not thwart the intended outcome of the market as it has in some jurisdictions including Ontario. The limited ability of consumers to understand changes in the electricity sector in the short run poses a real constraint on what can be achieved politically. Letting the market set the price means that governments cannot ensure any particular future price level and both theory and experience tell us that prices may increase after restructuring (California, Ontario, Alberta). This makes it difficult to sell restructuring to consumers who will be interested in the price they pay and not much interested in abstractions like efficiency. Another challenge for electricity restructuring is that the starting points differ from one jurisdiction to another and the starting points matter. The problems are different if you begin with a crown monopoly than if you have investor-owned utilities; if expected prices are higher than recent prices rather than lower; if governments have been deeply involved in the electricity sector rather than distant from it; if the public has experience with stable electricity prices rather than fluctuating prices. Finally, the situation in neighbouring jurisdictions matters as well. Restructuring in a low-price jurisdiction surrounded by high prices will increase the prospect of price increases at home, while a high-price island is more likely to see its prices decline. If workable competition will be difficult to achieve at home, strong interties to neighbouring jurisdictions can improve competitive performance if the market is appropriately designed. Air pollution, like electricity, moves across borders, so one must assess and evaluate the pollution implications of competition and make any appropriate adjustments to the market design.electricity restructuring, electric utilities, market design, electricity price, electricity market, spot price, retail competition

Differences in Emergence Date and Size Between the Sexes of \u3ci\u3eMalacosoma Americanum\u3c/i\u3e the Eastern Tent Caterpillar (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae)

Malacosoma americanum males were smaller and began to pupate earlier than females. Since the sexes spent the same amount of time as pupae, males also emerged earlier. The adaptive significance of these results is discussed. Emergence data revealed an interesting sidelight; no moths emerged from cocoons inside tents

The Impact of Sub-Metering on Condominium Electricity Demand

Growing concern about the environmental effects of electricity generation is renewing demands for electricity conservation and efficient usage. With a substantial fraction of the population insulated from energy price signals in bulk-metered apartment and condominium buildings, some jurisdictions are considering mandatory metering of individual suites. This study analyses data from a Toronto condominium building to assess the impacts of suite (or sub-) metering. We estimate the aggregate reduction in electricity usage arising from sub-metering to be about 20%. Financial savings to residents are much smaller. We analyze large variations across units in electricity consumption after sub-metering finding that unit characteristics explain much but not all of this variation. We perform both private and public cost-benefit analyses of sub-metering and find that the social net benefits depend strongly on the value assigned to externalities from generation and that net social benefits may often be positive when private benefits to the residents are negative.electricity demand, electricity sub-metering, energy conservation

An experimental investigation of the aerodynamics of a NACA 64A010 airfoil-flap combination with and without flap oscillations. Part 1: Steady-state characteristics

A NACA 64A010 airfoil with a sealed-gap 1/4-chord flap was tested between splitter plates in the NASA Ames 11- by 11-Foot Transonic Wind Tunnel at Mach numbers from 0.50 to 0.85, and Reynolds numbers based on chord from 3 to 13 million. Although the main purpose of the test was to obtain unsteady pressure data with the flap oscillating, no unsteady data are presented in this paper. The steady-state data are presented and compared with other test data to provide a basis for evaluating the results. Pressure data at two span stations are used to deduce early boundary-layer transitions at the midspan at higher Mach numbers, angles of attack, and flap angles. The effects of flap angle on pressures, normal force, pitching moment, and hinge moment are also presented in the report. Mach number errors caused by the splitter-plate configuration and the angle of attack are evaluated using pressure measurements near the floor and ceiling of the wind tunnel

Analysis of the boreal forest-tundra ecotone: A test of AVIRIS capabilities in the Eastern Canadian subarctic

A comparison was conducted between ground reflectance spectra collected in Schefferville, Canada and imaging spectrometer observations acquired by the AVIRIS sensor in a flight of the ER-2 Aircraft over the same region. The high spectral contrasts present in the Canadian Subarctic appeared to provide an effective test of the operational readiness of the AVIRIS sensor. Previous studies show that in this location various land cover materials possess a wide variety of visible/near infrared reflectance properties. Thus, this landscape served as an excellent test for the sensing variabilities of the newly developed AVIRIS sensor. An underlying hypothesis was that the unique visible/near infrared spectral reflectance patterns of Subarctic lichens could be detected from high altitudes by this advanced imaging spectrometer. The relation between lichen occurrence and boreal forest-tundra ecotone dynamics was investigated

The Apparently Normal Galaxy Hosts for Two Luminous Quasars

HST images (with WFPC2) of PHL~909\ ($z = 0.171$) and PG~0052$+$251\ ($z = 0.155$) show that these luminous radio-quiet quasars each occur in an apparently normal host galaxy. The host galaxy of PHL~909 is an elliptical galaxy ($\sim$ E4) and the host of PG~0052$+$251 is a spiral ($\sim$~Sb). Both host galaxies are several tenths of a magnitude brighter than $L^*$, the characteristic Schechter luminosity of field galaxies. The images of PHL~909 and PG~0052$+$251, when compared with HST images of other objects in our sample of 20 luminous, small-redshift ($z \leq 0.30$) quasars, show that luminous quasars occur in a variety of environments. The local environments of the luminous quasars range from luminous ellipticals, to apparently normal host galaxies, to complex systems of interacting components, to faint (and as yet undetected) hosts. The bright HII regions of the host galaxy of PG~0052$+$251 provide an opportunity to measure directly the metallicity of the host of a luminous quasar, to establish an upper limit to the mass of the nuclear AGN (i.e., the putative black hole source), and to test stringently the cosmological hypothesisthat the galaxy and the quasar are both at the distance indicated by the quasar redshift.Comment: 32 pages, LaTeX file. Seven postscript figures available from anonymous ftp to ftp://eku.sns.ias.edu/pub/sofia/ as phlpgfg1.ps, phlpgfg2.ps, phlpgfg3.ps, phlpgfg4.ps, phlpgfg5.ps, phlpgfg6a.ps, phlpgfg6b.ps, phlpgfg7.ps. To appear in ApJ, February 1, 199

The coronavirus outbreak: the central role of primary care in emergency preparedness and response

On the last day of 2019, a cluster of cases of a pneumonia with unknown cause were reported by the Chinese authorities to the World Health Organization (WHO), believed to be connected to a seafood market in Wuhan, China. This market was closed the following day. On 7 January 2020, a novel coronavirus was isolated, and known pathogens were ruled out.1 Coronaviruses usually cause respiratory illness ranging from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Clinical symptoms and signs of the Wuhan coronavirus include fever, with some sufferers experiencing difficulty breathing and bilateral pulmonary infiltrates seen on chest X-ray. WHO are referring to it as ‘2019-nCov’. At the time of writing, there have been over 4,500 confirmed cases and 106 deaths, including among healthcare workers. Over 98% of these cases are within mainland China, but cases have also been confirmed in tens of other countries