Engineering Commons^™

Stochastic Modeling Of Decarbonizing Strategy, Policy, And Market-Induced Incentives For The Us Electricity Sector, Jessica W.A. Azure, Samuel Frimpong, Mahelet G. Fikru

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In line with the global pursuit of achieving net-zero carbon emissions, integrating carbon capture and storage (CCS) and renewable energy (RE) technologies is important in power production. This study evaluates the profitability of CCS and RE technologies as alternative ways of achieving climate change goals. While past research focused on costs, technological advancements, and capture methods, there is a need for more studies on assessing the financial feasibility of these climate change solutions under uncertain conditions, alongside specific performance goals and strategies to entice power producers. Using a comprehensive framework featuring deterministic and stochastic modeling approaches, this research explores the …

Advances In Energy Hybridization For Resilient Supply: A Sustainable Approach To The Growing World Demand, Haider Al-Rubaye, Joseph D. Smith, Mohammed H.S. Zangana, Prashant Nagapurkar, Yishu Zhou, Gregory M. Gelles

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Energy poverty, defined as a lack of access to reliable electricity and reliance on traditional biomass resources for cooking, affects over a billion people daily. The World Health Organization estimates that household air pollution from inefficient stoves causes more premature deaths than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. Increasing demand for energy has led to dramatic increases in emissions. The need for reliable electricity and limiting emissions drives research on Resilient Hybrid Energy Systems (RHESs), which provide cleaner energy through combining wind, solar, and biomass energy with traditional fossil energy, increasing production efficiency and reliability and reducing generating costs and emissions. Microgrids …

Notes On The Economics Of Residential Hybrid Energy System, Mahelet G. Fikru, Gregory M. Gelles, Ana M. Ichim, Joseph D. Smith

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Despite advances in small-scale hybrid renewable energy technologies, there are limited economic frameworks that model the different decisions made by a residential hybrid system owner. We present a comprehensive review of studies that examine the techno-economic feasibility of small-scale hybrid energy systems, and we find that the most common approach is to compare the annualized life-time costs to the expected energy output and choose the system with the lowest cost per output. While practical, this type of benefit—cost analysis misses out on other production and consumption decisions that are simultaneously made when adopting a hybrid energy system. In this paper, …

Less Is More: Beating The Market With Recurrent Reinforcement Learning, Louis Kurt Bernhard Steinmeister

Masters Theses

"Multiple recurrent reinforcement learners were implemented to make trading decisions based on real and freely available macro-economic data. The learning algorithm and different reinforcement functions (the Differential Sharpe Ratio, Differential Downside Deviation Ratio and Returns) were revised and the performances were compared while transaction costs were taken into account. (This is important for practical implementations even though many publications ignore this consideration.) It was assumed that the traders make long-short decisions in the S&P500 with complementary 3-month treasury bill investments. Leveraged positions in the S&P500 were disallowed. Notably, the Differential Sharpe Ratio and the Differential Downside Deviation Ratio are risk …

A Systems And Cost Analysis Of Human Rated Mars Entry, Descent, And Landing Vehicles, Paul Daniel Friz

Doctoral Dissertations

"Cost is one of the biggest obstacles to sending humans to Mars. However, spacecraft costs are typically not taken into consideration until after the preliminary vehicle and mission concepts have been designed. Once costs have been estimated, managers and project teams often lack confidence that the final cost of the mission will match the preliminary estimates. The present work provides a robust methodology for using cost as a valid metric early in the design phase of future human Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) vehicles. This is done in three parts. First, state of the art parametric costing methods are …

Managing Risks Of Market Price Uncertainty For A Microgrid Operation, Sriram Raghavan

Masters Theses

"After deregulation of electricity in the United States, the day-ahead and real-time markets allow load serving entities and generation companies to bid and purchase/sell energy under the supervision of the independent system operator (ISO). The electricity market prices are inherently uncertain, and can be highly volatile. The main objective of this thesis is to hedge against the risk from the uncertainty of the market prices when purchasing/selling energy from/to the market. The energy manager can also schedule distributed generators (DGs) and storage of the microgrid to meet the demand, in addition to energy transactions from the market. The risk measure …

The Effects Of Congressional Elections On Future Equity Market Returns, Vincent Louis Ovlia, David Lee Enke, Michael C. Davis

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

As the primary entity responsible for new legislation, Congress is capable of enacting legislation that may affect future market returns. To examine potential effects, the percentage of the House of Representatives and Senate controlled by a political party is examined. Additionally, the effect on returns in a change in the percentage of seats gained or lost in Congressional elections is analyzed. To test both theories, a modified “partisan view” model is adopted. Results point to the fact that equity markets perform better in situations in which power is distributed between political parties.

The Opec Oil-Pricing Policies, Vaman Rao

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

The capital-theoretic model suggested for determining the price- quantity combinations does not hold in the case of most natural resources, including petroleum, since the inelastic demand function would vitiate the optimal solution. The specification of a dynamic demand function, with necessary, attributes, no doubt, results in a valid optimal solution in period t, but that could be achieved only at the cost of sub-optimal solution in other periods. If the OPEC starts behaving as a discriminating monopoly, instead of as a pure monopoly, the optimal solution is assured in all markets and in all time periods.

Theoretical And Empirical Approaches To The Analysis Of Opec, Albert L. Danielsen

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

Formal theoretical models of world oil price determination have been developed in recent years. In addition, some empirical estimates of expected future prices have been proposed. This paper explains how exhaustible resource and cartel theory are integrated into the opitmal control framework. Some empirical studies in the optimal control tradition are surveyed and evaluated.

The Energy Needs Of The Developing Countries, Vaman Rao

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

The energy needs of the developing countries are enormous. They will grow with the passage of time as the pace of economic development accelerates and those countries enter the industrial epoch. The sheer physical non-availability of coal and petroleum to most of them makes it obligatory to choose an unconventional resource as an energy-base. The nuclear fission is the only option now available which is feasible, less-expensive and plentiful. Solar and fusion may be the ultimate sources in the steady state, when appropriate technologies are developed.

The Political Economy Of Opec, Loring Allen

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a part of the hard reality of the present and future energy position of the U. S. It burst upon the world scene in 1973 in response to long years of shabby treatment by the oil companies and oil-importing countries. Through cooperation in the exercise of their sovereignty over oil deposits, OPEC members have extracted increasing revenues through restricting production and raising price. Although serving its own interests, OPEC benefits also the rest of the world, even though its presence portends a shift in the world balance of power.

Economics And Net Energy Analysis: Is A New Analytical Technique Needed For Energy Decision Making?, William J. Kruvant

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

The paper attempts to evaluate the claims of Net Energy Analysis (NEA) against those of economics in a reasonably comprehensive way. The principal problems of NEA concern system boundaries, aggregation across fuels, valuing external effects, valuing human labor and valuing time. These problems seriously limit the contribution Net Energy Analysis can make to allocation decisions, and allocation Is the central problem of energy policy.

An Overview Of Potential Impacts Of Changing Petroleum Energy Prices On Grain Farms, Jean-Paul Chavas, James B. Kliebenstein

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

Since the early 1970s world fossil fuel energy prices have risen dramatically. Assuming there is no significant breakthrough in en- ergy technology, the world will see further increases in energy prices. These changes will likely lead to economic adjustments in U. S. agriculture. A firm level linear programming model is used to evaluate what some of these adjustments could be on a Missouri grain farm. To obtain expected energy price affects on production mixes, energy prices are changed parametrically. Potential crop adjustments are from corn to single-crop soybeans to wheat as energy prices increase. Fertilization adjustments are from chemical to …

The Impact Of Changing Net Returns On Minimum Energy Requirements For Grain Farms, James B. Kliebenstein, Robert M. Finley, Douglas C. Farthing

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

With sources of energy more restricted and higher priced, optimal combinations of enterprises must logically be considered on the basis of energy efficiency. One method of ascertaining this efficiency is to optimize solutions for given levels of income on the basis of energy used (e.g., the objective function was in terms of energy kilocalories). In general, soybeans were most feasible at lower levels of income regardless of farm size and labor circumstance. As income levels increased, double-cropping (wheat soybeans) was first substituted and finally corn at highest income levels.

Human Resources For Energy Systems: Alternative Strategies Of Allocation, Curtis H. Adams, Burns E. Hegler

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

The choice of strategies in establishing manpower policy for energy is critical for the attairment of energy goals. Three alternative strategies are considered with the tradeoffs of each evaluated.

Non-Cash Incentives And Worker Motivation, Daniel Franklin Cole

Masters Theses

"A problem of growing concern in the United States deals with the poor results of the nation's businesses in terms of productivity. The U.S. is now suffering the worst decline in productivity in a generation. While part of this decline can be attributed to economic conditions, data indicates that the labor force could be more productive if it wanted to do so. A study has shown that 52% of all workers feel they aren't producing at full capacity. Alienation of the American worker is identified as one of the most important contributors to this problem.

Because it is often difficult …

Water Resources Development -- An Analysis Of Economic Justification Practices Of The Corps Of Engineers, Kerwood W. Barrand

Masters Theses

"Presented herein is a brief analysis of the economic justification practices of the Corps of Engineers as commonly implemented in proposals concerning water resources projects. Where applicable, recommended methods are compared to similar methods advocated for, and accepted by, private engineering firms in similar situations.

The major problem exists in the lack of a profit motive in programs undertaken with the use of public funds. However, a profit can be said to have been realized in public works programs if the total benefits of the programs to all the people exceed the costs of these programs and, further, if the …

A Comparison Of The Real Price And Market Price Of Some Common Metals, Kon-Hock Khaw

Masters Theses

"A number of complex factors influence the fluctuation of the price of a metal. In this investigation, the writer is concerned with the influence of the purchasing power of the dollar and, therefore the difference between the value (real price) and market price of nine metals. That is, this is a study of metal prices and their corresponding values. No attempt is made to analyze the supply and demand of the past or the future, except as they are expressed by their function -- price.

To aid in the comparison, a set of index numbers for metals is compiled and …