Deterministic capacity planning problems in electricity systems can be solved by comparing technology specific long-term and short-term marginal costs. In an uncertain market environment, Mean-Variance Portfolio (MVP) theory provides a consistent framework to balance risk and return in power...

Power systems with high shares of wind and solar power have to balance their intermittent nature. Pumped-hydro storage plants can provide the required flexibility, while thermal backup plants offer an alternative. This paper proposes a capacity planning model to describe the efficient technology...

Improvements in the building stock insulation and the replacement of heating systems will have to take place within the next decades in order to lower heat demand and the associated carbon emissions of the building sector. Moreover, continuous investments in heating systems are nec-essary due to...

This paper investigates the incentives market participants have in the German electricity balancing mechanism. Strategic over- and undersupply positions are the result of existing stochastic arbitrage opportunities between the spot market and the balancing mechanism. This strategic behavior can...

Optimal age replacement policies for network components such as cables, overhead lines or transformers are usually identified based on gathered knowledge about the state of a component and its stochastic deterioration process. In this context, uncertainty is an important challenge because...

The liberalization of European natural gas markets forces market participants to base their decisions on market prices. For owners and operators of natural gas storage facilities it is therefore necessary to take market prices into account for their decisions. In this framework this paper...

The ECB is a central bank with a high level of transparency. However, it still does not publish voting records or minutes, and it publishes infl ation forecasts only on a quarterly basis. This paper argues that both the credibility and effectiveness of the ECB’s monetary policy could be...

This paper links Hotelling's theory, in recent literature applied to an emission constrained environment, with the classical capacity planning framework to describe portfolio timeâ€paths in electricity production. Emission targets are considered by a ceiling on the stock of pollution. We...

With increasing amounts of power generation from intermittent sources like wind, transmission planning has not only to account for the expected load curve but also for the stochasticity of volatile power infeeds. Moreover investments in power generation are no longer centrally planned in...

In many European countries, the deregulation of energy markets leading to the introduction of unbundling and incentive regulation for utilities firms has made the task of setting an adequate cost of equity more difficult. Firstly, Legal Unbundling led to the creation of many legally independent...