Sharif Digital Repository

This research is about raffles held by firms. Nowadays raffles are used by some firms as a mean to attract more customers and obtain more profit to the extent that they compete on their prize instead of their price. In order to investigate this phenomenon, we introduce a model based on spatial competition. This model explains the reason firms have incentive to offer raffles when consumer is risk neutral. According to this model we conclude competing on prize reduces consumers’ surplus considerably. Because of this, the intervention of policy maker can prevent the reduction in consumers’ surplus  

The accuracy, speed, and ability to do work in hazardous environments has led to the development of robots in everyday life. Accordingly, research on quadruped robots for use in military environments is expanding. Designing control algorithms for walking and stepping on quadruped robots is one of the most important parts of the design of these robots, which creates complex movements despite the lack of sophisticated equipment in the robots. One of the robot gaiting control methods is dynamic based method that is based on the robot’s dynamics and resistant to perturbations. Trajectory based method is another robot gaiting control method that is inspired from CPG algorithm and has learning... 

Parkinson's is a disease caused by a disorder in the central nervous system of the body. There is no definite cure for this disease, but one of the ways to prevent the progress of this disease is to use movement therapy. One of the goals of designing wearable systems consisting of inertial sensors is to make it possible to perform this movement therapy from a distance. The purpose of the present study and research is to use the approach of simple and complex activities in order to increase the accuracy in the detection of activities and also to solve the problems of the previous system, with the help of creating the ability to detect complex meaningful activities for Parkinson's patients. In... 

Restructuring and privatization in power system such as any industry leads to better market operation and more social welfare. Since two decade the power system in many countries have changed from monopoly to free market. In a restructured network the technical and economical aspects should be considered together. Ancillary services are needed for any power system to be operated in an optimal and secure manner. Reactive power and voltage regulation is one of the most important ancillary services in the network. this service should be supplied by its providers through a competitive market and system operator determines the optimal dispatch among different bids. The cost of purchasing reactive... 

This thesis addresses the problem of dynamic security assessment in power sys-tems with an emphasis on its application in restructured power systems and issues arising in its applications. The new electric utility environment has an immedi-ate consequence of emphasis on reliability and secure operation of power systems. This requires faster and more precise methods to assess the dynamic aspect of se-curity. On the other hand, this issue is becoming challenging when the determined dispatch might not be accommodated due to violation of the limits.This thesis addresses the problem of dynamic security assessment in power sys-tems with an emphasis on its application in restructured power systems... 

CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generates electricity and thermal energy simultaneously from input fuel. Since it has high energy efficiency and low installation time, it is an appropriate approach in energy management of residential complexes. In this project, stochastic programming based on Monte Carlo approach is used to handle uncertainties in the optimal sizing of CHP for residential complexes. Availability of CHP, boiler and AC bus as well as the electrical and thermal load forecast errors are considered as stochastic variables. Minimizing system total cost considering the probability of each scenario obtained from the scenario reduction algorithm is the objective function. The system... 

The process of deregulation that has involved electricity many markets has introduced several new interesting research topics in power system area. This thesis addresses one of the most fascinating issues among them: the study of distributed generation both renewable and conventional integration in distribution networks. From the distribution network operator (DNO)'s point of view, it is of interest to develop a comprehensive methodology which considers various distributed generation technologies as an option for supplying the demand in distribution networks. In this thesis, the planning problem has been multi-objectively modeled. This will help the planner in decision making while knowing... 

Since 1980s the electricity market has been gradually evolving from a monopoly market into a liberalized one for encouraging competition and improving efficiency. This brings the opportunity for generation companies (Gencos) to make more profits while embracing more risks of not being dispatched. Therefore, it has become a core interest for the Gencos to develop optimal bidding strategies to maximize the profits and minimize the risks while participating in such a competitive market. Error of determining day-ahead electricity price is one of the sources of the risk. Energy price has a high impact on bidding strategy optimization process. So it should be determined with low error which is not... 

Losses are unavoidable in any parts of power systems, from generation to receiving nodes and occur in transmission and distribution networks. However, the main loss component is produced in distribution networks. Energy losses in distribution networks are about 70% of technological transport energy losses.
Energy losses in distribution networks are an important indicator for the planning and operation of the system. A fast, reliable and accurate energy loss calculation method is required for optimal operation of the distribution networks.
Energy loss depends on network's operating conditions. Loads values and loads factors are time variables; therefore, methods based on probability... 

Natural gas power plant installed in power system as rapid start unit. In the recent decades, with increasing in the number of gas generating units in the world, consideration of natural gas transmission network in optimal solution of security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) become a non-negligible problem. The gas transmission grid constraints integrated into the scheduling of thermal units in the proposed model for minimizes power system operating cost. In a power plant transmission of natural gas to power plant is very important because congestion in natural gas pipeline increases. This model could consider natural gas storage tank in gas transmission network as decision variable.... 

Uncertain fuel prices and also global climate changes are accompanied by some state initiatives such as renewable portfolio standards (RPS). This has caused a fast growth in the amount of renewable energy installed worldwide especially wind energy over last decades. However, the intrinsic characteristics of wind farms output power, i.e. intermittency and volatility of wind speed along with being non-dispatchable in output generation of wind turbine raises many new technical and financial challenges for power system operators and planners. Up to these issues, large level of wind power penetration causes a growing concern in wind energy curtailment issue which the wind farm’s operator may be... 

Electricity retailers are one of the power market entities which act as an intermediary between the producers in the wholesale market and the consumers in the retail side. The main task of a retailer in the power market is to set contract with the consumers to supply their electricity during a pre-specified time period and to participate in the wholesale market to supply the electricity needed by its costomers. Retailer’s contract with its customers may be a simple contract with a fixed pre-determined energy price or include some more complicated feathures such as involvement of a percent of green energy or variable price and demand response contracts. Moreover, retailer can supply its... 

Recent years of capitalism bold role and the competitive environment of variant fields of our life, sparking the idea which considers the electricity (one of the most crucial human requirement) as a commodity of a competitive market to be traded between confident subscribers by easy access. Therefore, by converting the exclusive structure of electricity supply system to a competitive one, some new roles are created to fulfill the electricity generation, transmission and distribution processes. Retail is one of the new roles, defined as a power system restructuring development helper by support of electricity trading, which can be involved in different transactions according to the market... 

In recent years, due to restructuring in the electric power industry, distributed generation has become one of the most important subjects and DGs and renewable energy sources have been increasingly expected as a supplement and an alternative to a conventional large scale central power system. their success depends not only on the distribution of the available renewable energy sources in a region but also on the power grids connectable capacity in the area. Photovoltaic system is one of the best RESs for residential electricity supply because it is noiseless and solar power is widely available and households can use it via photovoltaic cells in their homes. There are two major problems... 

This Thesis presents a new approach for determining the day-ahead bidding strategies of a hybrid electric energy company. The company has both energy generation and energy retailing businesses in a competitive electricity market. Demand response programs are also considered in the retail side of the company in order to hedge the risk of participation in wholesale market. Price-taker and price maker companies are considered in this thesis separateky.For the price-taker hybrid structure, the predivtion of day-ahead prices are used to evaluate the optimum bidding and offering strategies. Also, day-ahead market price uncertainty is modeled, using non-probabilistic Information Gap Decision Theory... 

In this research, self-optimizing method has been used to design a plant-wide control structure for processes containing purge and recycle streams. The method is based on the concept of self-optimizing variables to maximize the process profitability in the presence of possible disturbances. The purpose of this thesis is to perform this procedure on ammonia and methanol processes containing purge and recycle streams.Using the results obtained for the ammonia process and considering the constraints and operating conditions of the problem, the active constraints of this process were detected which were cooling water flow rates to exchangers. According to local analysis method, self-optimizing... 

Renewable energy deployment through distributed energy resources is among the central goals of future power systems. Microgrids have proven to be an economically viable soloution for distributed energy resources integration into power system and benefit the customers with uninterrupted power supply. In this context provisional microgrids have been introduced with the main goal of rapid renewable energy sources deployment. Since a considerable portion of renewable enegy resources as well as residential loads are DC and this portion is expected to grow even further, hybrid AC/DC design of provisional microgrids can improve both efficiency and economic benefit by optimal arrangement of AC/DC... 

Energy storage is a pivotal technology to dealing with increasing demand for reliability and challenges of renewable energy integration. This thesis provides a benders decomposition framework for expansion studies of energy storage systems (ESSs) in high wind penetrated power system and uncertainties of wind farms expansion and wind speed. This work proposes probabilistic and robust approaches to determine the optimal location and size of storage devices to reduse wind curtailment. The proposed methodologies are implemented on the modified IEEE 73-bus test system and their anticipated applicability are compared to each other and well verified