• Energy Research
• 7. Clean energy close

Abstract Service providers and policymakers require data on the value of a service to consumers to justify investment. Due to the high reliability of electricity services in Europe, data on the value of constant electricity supply is not available. A choice experiment framework is used to estimate the welfare cost to households of power outages in northwest England. The willingness to pay (WTP) estimates obtained suggest that a household in northwest England is WTP; £5.29 to avoid having power outages in peak periods, £7.37 to have outages during the week rather than the weekend or bank holiday, and £31.37 to avoid power outages in winter. Households are also WTP between £1.17 (20 min) and £0.05 (480 min) to avoid a power outage depending on the length of the power outage. The use of a mixed logit model also demonstrated the impact of different socio-demographic and household characteristics on respondents WTP to avoid a power outage. From a policy perspective, the results provide data or a 'price' on the importance of constant electricity supply to domestic customers. Through engagement with policy makers and industry, these 'price signals' may be used to justify future investment and policy in the electricity sector.

Wave Energy Conversion (WEC) devices are at a pre-commercial stage of development with feasibility studies sensitive to uncertainties surrounding assumed input costs. This may affect decision making. This paper analyses the impact these uncertainties may have on investor, developer and policymaker decisions using an Irish case study. Calibrated to data present in the literature, a probabilistic methodology is shown to be an effective means to carry this out. Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) metrics are used to quantify the certainty of achieving a given cost or return on investment. We analyse the certainty of financial return provided by the proposed Irish Feed-in Tariff (FiT) policy. The influence of cost reduction through bulk discount is also discussed, with cost reduction targets for developers identified. Uncertainty is found to have a greater impact on the profitability of smaller installations and those subject to lower rates of cost reduction. This paper emphasises that a premium is required to account for cost uncertainty when setting FiT rates. By quantifying uncertainty, a means to specify an efficient premium is presented.

Linking novel real-time sensor data with comprehensive individual baseline survey data, this study estimates the effect of fuel poverty on the physical and mental health of social housing tenants in the southwest of the UK. Structural equation modeling is applied to show that fuel poverty has a significant negative effect on mental health. Other socio-economic characteristics (such as age, household size) and house characteristics (e.g., energy-efficient rating, house type) are associated with fuel poverty. Fuel poverty is also related to poorer mobility. Our results suggest that special attention should be paid to tenants with disabilities and chronic diseases since they are more vulnerable to fuel poverty and health issues.