Light Company Research Articles

Transient response of a megawatt-scale solar photovoltaic in an electric distribution utility

There is an increasing trend among customers of an electrical distribution utility to adopt grid-tied solar photovoltaic systems. This shift offers multiple benefits to consumers, including lower monthly electricity bills and a contribution to the development of green energy. For the electrical distribution utility, various impacts may arise due to varying levels of solar energy penetration. This study investigates the effects of integrating varying levels of solar photovoltaic penetration into the commercial consumer network of Cagayan de Oro Electric Power and Light Company (CEPALCO) in the Philippines. Utilizing PowerWorld simulator, the research evaluates 11 different scenarios with solar penetration levels adjusted according to the percentage of load demand. Key findings include alterations in solar megavolt ampere of reactive power output, bus voltage levels, transformer power loading, and transmission line ampacity, with frequency levels remaining stable across scenarios. The optimal solar penetration level was identified at 70%, balancing the benefits of solar energy integration with the need to maintain grid stability and operational limits. This optimal level ensures the effective utilization of renewable energy sources without compromising the performance of CEPALCO’s electrical infrastructure. The research concludes with recommendations for maintaining grid stability and operational limits at the optimal solar penetration limits.

Digitalization of banks and inclusive finance: New insights from cultural industry's financing constraints

AbstractThe emergence of digital financial technology emerges as a promising solution, allowing banks to leverage unique digital footprints to alleviate information asymmetry and mitigate the light asset company's financing constraints. Through a theoretical analysis, we reveal that the digital transformation of banks significantly increases loan allocations to SMEs within the cultural industry. This development toward inclusive finance is further substantiated by robust empirical evidence, indicating a notable alleviation of financing constraints, and confirming the quantitative and structural transmission pathways influenced by bank digitalization.

Electric Discipline: Gendering Power and Defining Work in Electric Power Systems

Abstract In the 1970s, energy conservation was a household idea, but it was also a form of labor discipline. This article shows how one utility, the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company (PP&L), used energy conservation to discipline unwaged workers in the home, upending decades of home economics research that sought to substitute electric energy for human energy in housework. To effectively deploy this strategy, PP&L drew on utilities’ well-established understanding of women's unwaged work in the home as central to balancing the rhythms of power demand. By exploring this history, this article also argues that by adopting a more expansive understanding of labor in energy systems—which I term “energy work”—we can better understand the interrelationship of labor, gender, and power in the operation of energy systems and more fully incorporate the history of unwaged workers into the history of energy.

Integrating High Levels of Wind in Island Systems: Lessons from Hawaii

such as wind and solar plants presents an operational challenge for grid operators. The economic incentives and technical challenges that accompany large amounts of variable generation in island power systems are often much greater. The Hawaiian Electric Company and its subsidiaries, the Maui Electric Company and the Hawaii Electric Light Company have considerable experience in planning and operating power systems with relatively high levels of wind power. The islands of Hawaii and Maui operate power systems with high levels of wind power (more than 10% by energy) and have experienced and addressed challenges associated with the variability and uncertainty of wind power. The island of Maui is anticipating further wind plant deployments in the near future. Recent analyses of possible near-term deployment of large amounts of wind power on the Oahu power system (500MW of wind power; approximately 1200MW peak and 520MW minimum annual load) has shown the potential for this system to accept almost 25% of its energy from wind and solar power. This paper will identify some of the wind integration challenges and highlight the benefits of a variety of strategies that are expected to improve system economics and operational reliability, including proposed modifications to the baseload thermal fleet (deeper turndown, higher ramp rates, and tuned droop characteristics), advanced wind turbine grid support features, new operating strategies, wind forecasting and refinements to the up and down reserve requirements. This paper will present the key findings in the context of useful insights and lessons learned that are relevant to other island power systems considering very high levels of wind power.

Special Issue on the 100th Anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake

On September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the Tokyo metropolitan area of Japan. It was an extremely powerful earthquake that caused a great fire. The death toll reached approximately 105,000, and the economic loss is estimated to have exceeded 30% of the Japanese gross national product at that time. For September 2023, the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) has planned a special issue to commemorate 100 years since the Great Kanto Earthquake. While previous special issues by the JDR have focused on specific disasters, this special issue will focus on the lessons and findings from the catastrophe and will cover even the progress of disaster research since then. We received fourteen important and thought-provoking manuscripts not only on scientific and engineering aspects but also on social and cultural aspects, including comparisons with other disasters, historical views, reconstruction issues, and future perspectives. These fourteen articles can be categorized into the three groups described below. The first four articles are the English translations of articles that originally appeared in “Koho Bosai,” the bimonthly journal on natural disaster reduction that is complied and published by the Disaster Management Section, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan. The JDR believes that these four articles provide a concise English description of various aspects of the Great Kanto Earthquake disasters. Dr. Takemura summarizes the seismic features of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake. Dr. Sekizawa summarizes the large scale urban fires that it caused. Dr. Suzuki describes various aspects of the emergency responses. Dr. Murosaki details the recovery project in Tokyo. Those articles discussed various lessons learned from the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and emphasized the importance of transferring the lessons toward future disaster mitigation. The next six papers were originally works studying various aspects of the Great Kanto Earthquake disasters. Dr. Midorikawa reviews the strong ground motion of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake. Dr. Kaneko evaluates the resulting tsunami. Mr. Mammen sheds new light on the relationship between Charles A. Beard and Goto Shinpei in terms of the recovery. Dr. Albini studies the voices of foreign residents who left impressive disaster processes at that time. Dr. Murao reviews the urbanization of Tokyo after the Kanto Earthquake. Dr. Shima studies the response of the Tokyo Electric Light Company, Inc. to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The last four papers are works on various aspects of disaster risk reduction, but all of these works were inspired by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in one way or another. Dr. Shaw provides a framework for repositioning earthquake risk reduction. Dr. Shimbo explores the Phase Free Concept. Dr. Shoji focuses on the possibility of Medium-Wave AM Radio Broadcasting. Dr. Yamaguchi studies the Risk Communication Method. The Editorial Board of the JDR thanks all of these contributors and hopes that these articles serve as great sources for further research in disaster risk reduction.

From concessions to competition: A journey through the evolution of the Philippine electric grid system, 1892–2021

This article traces the development of energy generation in the Philippines, tracing its origins back to 1892 and spanning through the significant reforms ushered in by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) in 2001, and the subsequent two decades. The early chapters of this history witnessed the establishment of pivotal companies like Compania La Electricista and Manila Railway & Light Company (Meralco), which hinged on foreign investment and expertise. Meralco’s expansion encompassed the establishment of diverse power plants, including hydroelectric facilities, to cater to the escalating electricity demand. However, concerns surrounding foreign dominance and reliance on imported resources led to the creation of the National Power Corporation (NPC) in 1936 tasked with harnessing hydraulic power and increasing state participation in the energy sector. The post-war era witnessed the NPC’s significant role in bolstering the nation’s growing economy, especially through its expansive power development program and the nationalization of the electric power landscape. Despite progress in rural electrification, the NPC encountered challenges like financial constraints, political complexities, and the contentious Bataan Nuclear Power Plant project, which impeded its operational efficiency. The 1990 s unveiled a severe power crisis due to financial constraints and inadequate infrastructure. In response, the government sought to invigorate the sector by incorporating private sector engagement through independent power producers. To rectify inefficiencies and stimulate competition, the EPIRA was enacted in 2001 to steer the energy sector toward a comprehensive overhaul by restructuring the power industry and divesting NPC’s generation and transmission assets. This article provides insights into the historical trajectory of the Philippine energy sector, culminating in a series of reforms aimed at cultivating a more streamlined and competitive power sector, positioned to meet the nation’s ever-evolving energy needs.

Dialogue on Democracy

Dialogue on Democracy

No Poor among Them: Poverty and Mormonism's Trek toward Secularism

No Poor among Them: Poverty and Mormonism's Trek toward Secularism

How Hortilux Used Low-Code to Develop Its IoT Digital Services

By 2021, Hortilux, a Dutch horticultural grow light company, offered multiple digital services in its low-code-based HortiSense IoT platform. HortiSense was developed to fulfill the company’s mission of moving from a product-centric to a service-centric solution provider. Based on interviews with IT and non-IT employees, the case explores an example of a company using low-code development beyond simple task automation and illustrates the company’s journey in bringing its IoT platform to market quickly despite a technical talent deficit. The case introduces low-code development, its opportunities, and challenges, and guides the reader to analyze the potential of low-code innovation in an industry undergoing digital transformation.

Hannah Claire Haines, 1891–1974: Not the Average “Militant Female”

Hannah Claire Haines, 1891–1974: Not the Average “Militant Female”

Density-based clustering algorithm for associating transformers with smart meters via GPS-AMI data

The ongoing deployment of Distributed Energy Resources, while bringing benefits, introduces significant challenges to the electric utility industry, especially in the distribution grid. These challenges call for closer monitoring through state estimation, where real-time topology recovery is the basis for accurate modeling. Previous methods either ignore geographical information, which is important in connectivity identification or are based on an ideal assumption of an isolated sub-network for topology recovery, e.g., within one transformer. This requires field engineers to identify the association, which is costly and may contain errors. To solve these problems, we propose a density-based topology clustering method that leverages both voltage domain data and the geographical space information to segment datasets from a large utility customer pool, after which other topology reconstruction methods can carry over. Specifically, we show how to use voltage and GPS information to infer associations within one transformer area, i.e., to identify the meter-transformer connectivity. To give a guarantee, we show a theoretic bound for our clustering method, providing the ability to explain the performance of the machine learning method. The proposed algorithm has been validated by IEEE test systems and Duquesne Light Company in Pittsburgh, showing outstanding performance. A utility implementation is also demonstrated.

News From Japan

The history of the use of electricity in Japan began as telecommunication, which started in 1869, one year after the Meiji Restoration. The first electric arc lamp shone in Ginza, Tokyo, in 1882, the same year as the start of operation of Edison's Pearl Street Power Plant in New York. Only four years later (1886), Tokyo Electric Light Company, one of the predecessors of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, started its business as the first electric power company in Japan. Many similar companies started their businesses in the following several years. In these early days, electric power companies in eastern Japan imported 50-Hz generators from Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG) in Germany, and those in western Japan imported 60-Hz generators from General Electric Company in the United States. From this historical background, AC 50 Hz is still used in eastern Japan and 60 Hz in western Japan.

Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons by Lisa Siraganian

<i>Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons</i> by Lisa Siraganian

Evaluating the economic efficiency of investment project for the technological process digitalization of light industry enterprises

Subject. The article considers the development of an algorithm for evaluating the effectiveness of an investment project for the digitalization of light industry enterprises from the perspective of various stakeholders. Objectives. The aim is to evaluate the economic efficiency of an investment project for the digitalization of the technological process of light industry companies from the position of various stakeholders. Methods. We employ the comparative analysis, statistical analysis, the net present value method, the investment analysis, and sensitivity analysis. Results. We review an investment project for digitalization of the technological process of a light industry company, determine the effects that will be obtained during the implementation of the investment project, provide calculations of these effects, and define changes in the labor and material costs of companies. Conclusions. The implementation of an investment project of light industry enterprises will affect two categories of costs: labor and material. The introduction of the technology will reduce time losses in the total amount of labor inputs of one item manufacture, therefore, the production staff will have free time to produce additional items. Material costs will be increased due to the introduction of RFID tags for each unit of products and materials for additional production. The maximum possible reduction of time losses is 50%, taking into account the capacity of OOO Sportego. The implementation of the investment project will be effective in case of reducing losses by at least 15% and not more than 50%.

“The Door to the Promised Land of Atomic Peace and Plenty”

Most countries met the promotion of the peaceful uses of atomic energy as a tool for social and economic development with skepticism. In countries where it took hold, its acceptance was driven by a few elite actors. In Mexico the most salient included the Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Nabor Carrillo, and William Draper Jr., President of the Canadian-based Mexican Light and Power Company. Nuclear technologies for so-called less-developed countries became a key niche for non-governmental actors such as the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project, the Atomic Industrial Forum, and the Fund for Peaceful Atomic Development, Inc., which played a relevant role in the implementation of the new foreign atomic policy after 1954 in close consonance with US governmental offices like the Foreign Operations Administration, which was superseded by the International Cooperation Administration in 1955. Without signing a manifest government-to-government agreement, Mexican officials were able to overcome domestic obstacles and historical distrust with her northern neighbor to get nuclear expertise and commodities. Apparently restricted to universities and private industries, this negotiation justified and backed the education and training of the first generation of Mexican nuclear engineers as part of the Phoenix Project at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At the same time, the Mexican Program provided a learning experience in nuclear and technical assistance diplomacy for industrialists and private interests in the implementation of the Atoms for Peace initiative abroad. This paper is part of a special issue entitled “Revealing the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project.”

La era de las redes: servicios públicos, grandes empresas y finanzas internacionales en las ciudades mexicanas a principios del siglo XX

En la primera década del siglo XX hubo en México las condiciones para la formación y aplicación de grandes capitales nacionales y extranjeros dedicados a la construcción de infraestructura o prestación de servicios públicos en un conjunto muy amplio de ciudades. Se trató de un momento clave en la historia económica y empresarial, en la historia urbana y también en la historia de la tecnología: fue la era de las redes financieras, las redes de servicios públicos y la expansión empresarial. El texto estudia la concentración empresarial que ocurrió en estos años, poniendo especial atención en la Compañía Bancaria de Fomento y Bienes Raíces y en los intereses del empresario Enrique Schöndube, pero también en las compañías de Weetman Pearson y en The Mexican Light and Power Company, ponderando su importancia frente a otras que tuvieron menores alcances. Se sigue su proceso de creación y las reglas de expansión capitalista en las que se inscribía su acción; para explicar los cambios ocurridos a nivel urbano y económico, se analizan sus mecanismos de operación, su diversificación de intereses, sus conexiones internacionales y su relación con otras empresas. Al final, se miden sus alcances, se esbozan los nuevos escenarios que surgieron para las empresas a raíz del estallido de la revolución mexicana y, sobre todo, se reflexiona sobre el escenario en que quedaron las ciudades mexicanas para cumplir con el proyecto de instalar en ellas redes de servicios. A partir del seguimiento bibliográfico de casos particulares, de documentación oficial y privada, series estadísticas, hemerografía, entre otras fuentes, se abona al conocimiento de historias empresariales importantes y se articulan líneas de interpretación comparativa que permiten ofrecer una versión más acabada sobre el conjunto de ciudades mexicanas y sobre la presencia de redes, ya de servicios, ya de empresas o finanzas, ya de técnicos, tecnologías y agentes.

Shareholders' rights in international law: (con)temporary reflections in the Diallo case

In the 21st century there is still an ongoing intensive discussion among practitioners and scholars as to whether, under international law, an independent right to property exists. When the International Court of Justice (hereinafter – ICJ) announced its decisions in the Ahmadou Sadio Diallo case (Republic of Guinea v. Democratic Republic of Congo, 2007, 2010, 2012; hereinafter – Diallo), these debates intensified. This article analyzes the decisions of the Diallo case, as this case is a valuable source which: (a) help to determine the approach of the most authoritative Court towards the right to property in international law, and (b) assist in evaluating the chance of defending the rights of shareholders in the ICJ. After examination, several observations are made. First, althought Guinea claims that the core issue in the case is a violation of property rights, the ICJ is not willing to elaborate on the right to property, its scope, or its content. This silence leads to further queries on the understanding of the concept of a global right to property. Second, the World Court rules that diplomatic protection based on the rule of protection by substitution does not amount to an international custom. A conclusion is made that the Diallo case is not a repetition of a standard discussed in the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Limited case (Belgium v. Spain, 1970; hereinafter – Barcelona Traction), but rather a reflection of a narrowed standard of Barcelona Traction. Therefore, the ICJ is not an amiable forum for the protection of the property rights of shareholders.

Hydroelectric Power: The First 30 Years [History

A bulletin of the edison Electric Light Company dated 20 December 1882 reported that three residences in Appleton, Wisconsin, were lit by an Edison system driven by water power (Figure 1). In 1933, the Appleton chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution installed a commemorative plaque that declared, Near this site the world's first hydroelectric central station was erected in 1882. In fact, the history of single-user hydroelectric power began in 1878 in Northumberland, England, and the history of continuous multiuser commercial hydroelectric power began in 1880 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Archibald Geikie's role in the establishment of the Scottish oil shale industry

Abstract Archibald Geikie played a fundamental, but largely unrecognized, role in the establishment of the Scottish oil shale industry by providing James ‘Paraffin’ Young with the critical information about the location, thickness and probable geographical extent of organic-rich shales during their field visit in 1858. Young subsequently used the observations to determine where to buy leases for commercial oil shale extraction and production before any competitors emerged. Geikie acquired his critical knowledge of the area whilst preparing the first map and memoir of the Edinburgh area published in 1859 and 1861, respectively. In 1866, Young's Paraffin Light and Mineral Oil Company Limited opened the Addiewell works, the largest oil shale works in the world at the time. By the late 1860s, there were over 120 works distilling oil in Scotland, mostly from the shales of the Lothians. Eventually, more than 22 million gallons of crude oil a year were produced in the Midland Valley in an industry that employed c. 40 000 people. Although the Scottish oil shale industry eventually closed in the 1960s, Geikie's legacy lives on through a better understanding of the geology of the Midland Valley and the renewed interest in extracting oil and gas from the shales buried beneath.

Replacement service decisions for disruption recovery in light rail systems

Purpose Attracting commuters from driving to light rail systems has a good potential for reducing carbon emissions. However, the light rail system is interrupted by disruptions frequently, which reduces its attraction to passengers. Therefore, how to provide a quick replacement service during disruptions is of vital importance to avoid passengers change to other higher emission vehicles. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the decision analysis of the replacement tool for disruption recovery service in urban public light rail systems from the perspective of environmental effect. Design/methodology/approach The traditional approach – bus replacement service – and the new approach – taxi replacement service – which has been recently adopted by several cities, are examined individually and compared. The benefit of the light rail company is formulated by balancing between carbon emission and financial cost. The involving parties’ decision functions taking the passengers’ behaviors as well as numerous other important factors into account are formulated. Findings Both theoretical and numerical sensitivity analyses are conducted to shed light for light rail systems to better coping with disruptions, increasing service level, and attracting more passengers to the environmental transit system to reduce carbon emission. Originality/value It is worth mentioning that this research is a successful application for disruption recovery in a public transit system considering the environmental effect. To the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first of such applications in this area and can be used not only in the public light rail systems, but also in other urban public transport network components such as the subway and rail systems.