Editorial

Citation

Bhattacharyya, S.C. and Dey, P.K. (2010), "Editorial", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 4 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijesm.2010.32804daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Volume 4, Issue 4

This last issue of 2010 contains six papers. Out of these, one comes from a special issue effort by Mr Alexei Sorokin that did not yield sufficient response. Another paper from this effort will be included in a separate regular issue in the future.

The first paper by Subhes C. Bhattacharyya and Govinda R. Timilsina reviews the energy system models with a special emphasis on modelling the features of energy systems in the developing world. The paper reviews a number of existing models using a common set of criteria and finds that most of the commonly used models are not capable of addressing the developing country features. They then suggest an agenda for improving the modelling features to address developing country specificities.

Raymond Li reviews the developments in the international coal trade. Although coal is the second most important fossil fuel after petroleum, it receives limited academic attention. This review provides an up-to-date status report by considering the phases of development and suggests that a mature spot market for coal is likely to develop in due course.

The next paper by Haydn Furlonge and Mark Kaiser presents a review of the natural gas industry in Trinidad and Tobago. Although the country’s oil and gas sector has over hundred years of commercial experience, there has been limited academic interest in this area. The paper reviews the development and analyses the policies followed by the country to determine the contributing factors for the success of the industry in the country.

The next two papers deal with the electricity industry. S. Subramanian and S. Ganesan present a novel approach to provide an improved solution to the unit commitment problem. They propose a two-stage process where in the first stage, optimal units are identified using the contribution factor. In the second stage, the sequential approach with a matrix framework has been used to decide the optimal dispatch of the committed units.

Supattana Nirukkanaporn and S. Kumar on the other hand analyse the effects of reforming the Thai power sector by introducing bilateral trading. They analyse the effects on the generation cost using three alternative scenarios of system operation. They find that the movement to bilateral trading will reduce the generation cost and improve system operation.

Finally, the last paper is drawn from an aborted special issue activity. Pierce H. Jones, Nicholas W. Taylor, M. Jennison Kipp and Harold S. Knowles present a protocol to estimate annual community energy consumption baselines. They find that the traditional approaches are likely to overestimate the savings potential compared to the proposed approach.

We hope you will enjoy reading these papers. We are always happy to hear from our readers about the papers. We wish you a very happy year end festivity and hope that you continue your support in 2011 and beyond.

Subhes C. Bhattacharyya, Prasanta K. Dey