This paper presents a study on the penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) under the consideration of a proposal for trading, environmental, and technical incentives, in the Colombian power system. To quantify the technical incentives, we simulated a part of the Colombian grid presents some busbars, low levels of voltage. We connect the busbars "problem", distributed generation and we found an increase in voltage that in a controlled manner can to help to better quality and continuity of electricity supply. Environmental and trade incentives were quantified using international experiences. In addition, we built a system dynamics model to evaluation the complete proposal. We found that the current incentives presented in the Colombian regulation such as tax breaks are insufficient to cover the total costs. Moreover, environmental incentives can be an efficient way to promote renewable energy use in Colombia, in order to achieve, more generating capacity with less pollution indices; and technical incentives in conjunction with environmental incentives can improve further the growth of DG in Colombia. Thus, the DG diffusion become an additional tool for the operator of the interconnected system to make voltage control, improve the quality, and security of electrical power systems.
The emissions of greenhouse gases have become a great worldwide concern due to their effects on climate change. This led to determine, through the Kyoto Protocol, goals to decrease at least 5% of the GHGs by 2012, with respect to the 1990 levels. This agreement established three explicit mechanisms: joint implementation, clean development mechanism and emissions trading. In this context, the European Union created an Emissions Trading Scheme EU ETS (EU Emissions Trading Scheme) that committed 73% of the global carbon market in 2009. Given that the electricity sector is the main contributor of GHGs, it is important to assess the impact of the EU ETS on this sector. This article undertakes this task with the support of a system dynamics model, using the United Kingdom as a case study. Preliminary results indicate that even under a scenario of low prices for emission allowances this would induce significant changes in the installed capacity of the electricity sector, replacing fossil-based technologies by cleaner ones, such as wind and nuclear energy; and also significant reductions of CO2 emissions.
The Portuguese Energy Policy considers the development of a commercially viable and competitive market for energy performance contracting (EPC) as a main mechanism to achieve the objectives of energy efficiency improvement. This paper proposes a study to investigate how to achieve widespread adoption of energy performance contracting by means of system dynamics modelling and simulation. To explore and gather insights on this question, a system dynamics model representing the system of the Portuguese EPC market at industry level will be created. The simulation of that model will provide a helpful basis for analysing and explaining the development of key variables, and accel-erating learning on the managerial, organizational and political adaptation processes that foster the diffusion of EPC adoption. The first phase of this research project aims at identifying and analysing the key factors and critical cause-effect relations that drive the adoption of EPC. With this purpose, a qualitative content analysis on relevant documents was performed and a set of interviews was conducted. That data was ana-lysed to capture the critical variables and its interrelation to formulate a preliminary representation of the system structure as stock and flow diagrams.
Social science theories are developed to understand problematic behavior and describe the social structure believed to be the cause. Only occasionally used, system dynamics has long been considered an ideal testing ground for such theories.
This paper aims to show that incremental stress over environment can lead civilizations to overshoot their resource base as it has been suggested, for instance, by Jared Diamond. Despite this author has recently been criticized by scholars of different orientations, we think this criticism has likely been exaggerated. Diamond`s answers to the critics are not always entirely
The paper will review representations of regional development models in terms of their assumptions (peeled away like an onion) and in terms of their level of complexity, very much in the tradition of Peter Allen's classification system. Some applied models of regional economic development in Asia will be presented in more detail and compared to each other in terms of their ability to understand development and to gain knowledge about real world problem solutions. Understanding reality and gaining knowledge about a problem require us to reduce the real complexity of any particular situation to a simpler, more understandable system by making specific simplifying assumptions. It is shown that there exist representations that, while being sufficiently simple to be understood, remain sufficiently representative of reality and yield significant power to make a big difference to regional economic development in Asia when compared to other, less useful representations. For instance, what is important to be explained in dynamic socio-economic systems is the structural change in terms of degree of heterogeneity of agent populations in space, the modularity and hierarchy of a system, and similar aspects of composite structural existence.
The events in the energy sector which are evolving globally put more and more emphasis on renewables, through the use of which it is possible to reduce not only impacts on climate change but also to place a more gradually decline of expendable fossil fuels. Countries more and more are placing importance on development strategies and applying the principles of greening the environment.
To ensure implementation of requirements of EU Directive 2006/32/EC on energy end-use efficiency and energy services in Latvia First National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (EEAP) 2008 2010 is approved where the goal is established to reduce energy consumption by 3483 GWh by 2016. The greatest energy savings 77% or 2701 GWh are planned in the residential sector as it is the major energy end user in the country. The largest part of it is multifamily buildings with every flat owned by individual owner.
This paper builds on previous research in stock-flow experiments. 168 participants were asked to recommend a hiring percentage of female professors they thought necessary to reach gender balance in an unbalanced personnel situation. They were also asked to estimate the timeframe needed to reach this. Additionally, participants were asked to write down a justification for their choices. These justifications provide insight into the reasoning people use in stock-flow tasks. The experiment confirmed that people have difficulties understanding the distinction between stock and flows, and in particular underestimate the effect of average delays. Moreover it showed that not only cognitive bias, but also political considerations play a role in reasoning on this task. Further research is needed to examine the interplay between these two.
In this paper, I present a model of the articulations between the formal and informal mechanisms of housing production with the objective to analyze the causes of the rise and persistence of informal settlements in the developing world. The model is based on System Dynamics, a method of simulation that deals with complex systems characterized by dynamic behavior, and is tested using the case of Bogotá, Colombia, a city known by the prevalence of informal housing markets and its rich experience in the implementation of public policies to address informality. The final results and policy experiments show that informality arises from the inadequacy of a system of infrastructure financing based on tariffs and cross-subsidization and from the unintended consequences of classic interventions to deal with this problem such as settlement up-grading and the provision of public housing. A preventive policy based on dismantling these interventions and increasing the supply of land with urban services through a change in the system of infrastructure funding shifting the source of financing from cross-subsidies to property taxation is proven to be a more cost-effective method to mitigate the negative consequences of informality.