Abstract
Global climate change is currently a focus issue because of its impacts on the most diverse natural systems and, consequently, the development of humanity. The electricity sector is a major contributor to climate change because of its long-standing dependence on fossil fuels. However, the energy paradigm is changing, and renewable sources tend to play an increasingly important role in the energy mix in Portugal. Due to the strong relationship between renewable energies and climate-related natural resources, the climate change phenomenon could have considerable effects on the electricity sector. This paper analyzes the effects of climate change on the energy mix in Portugal in the medium / long term (up to 2050). The proposed methodology is based on the simulation of climate scenarios and projections of installed power by type and consumption. The combinations of these conditions are inputted to an energy accounting simulation tool, able to combine all information and provide a characterization of the system state for each case. The most favorable forecasted scenarios indicate that a fully renewable electricity system is achievable in the medium term, in line with the objectives of the European Union, as long as investments in renewable sources continue to be stimulated in the coming years.

Abstract
The expansion and development of the electricity distribution grid is a complex multicriteria decision problem. The planning definition should take into consideration the investment benefits on the security of supply, quality of service, losses, as well as in other network features. Given the variety of assets and their context-dependent effects, estimating their global impact is very challenging. An additional difficulty is the combination of different types of benefits into a simple and clear portrayal of the planning alternatives. This paper proposes a methodology to estimate the benefits of distribution investments, in terms of five features: security of supply, quality of service, network losses, operational efficiency and new services. The approach is based on the adoption of objective and measurable indicators for each feature. The approach was tested with real data of Portuguese distribution grids and the results support the adopted approach and are being used as a decision-aid tool for grid planning. © 2020 IEEE.

Abstract
The building sector is responsible for a large share of Europe's energy consumption. Modelling buildings thermal behavior is a key factor for achieving the EU energy efficiency goals. Moreover, it can be used in load forecasting applications, for the prediction of buildings total energy consumption. The first phase of this work is the application of Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) for clustering buildings with similar physical characteristics and similar thermal efficiency. In the second phase, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are used to estimate the buildings heating and cooling loads. A final sensitivity test is performed to identify which building features have the most impact on the heating and cooling loads. The results obtained in the first phase revealed very distinct cluster prototypes, which demonstrates the AIS discriminating ability. The good estimation performance obtained in the second phase showed that this approach can be integrated in energy efficiency audits. Finally, the sensitivity analysis provided indications for actions (or legislation directives) in order to promote the design of more efficient buildings. © 2019 IEEE.

Abstract
This paper reports the main results that were obtained in the scope of a consultancy study that was developed for EDP Distribuição, the main Portuguese distribution company, to evaluate the impact of a number of changes to be introduced in the Tariff System. These changes were proposed by ERSE, the Portuguese Regulatory Agency for the Energy Services, and included the redesign of the tariff periods and the possible introduction of a geographic differentiation on the Access Tariff to reflect different daily and yearly demand and flow patterns along the country. This work involved the development of a Cost Benefit Analysis, CBA, as well as a Pilot Project that included 82 MV and HV consumers to evaluate several Key Performance Indices, KPI, used to characterize the proposed changes on the tariff system. © 2020 IEEE.

Abstract
The rapid growth of wind generation in northeast Brazil has led to multiple benefits to many different stakeholders of energy industry, especially because the wind is a renewable resource - an abundant and ubiquitous power source present in almost every state in the northeast region of Brazil. Despite the several benefits of wind power, forecasting the wind speed becomes a challenging task in practice, as it is highly volatile over time, especially when one has to deal with long-term predictions. Therefore, this paper focuses on applying different Machine Learning strategies such as Random Forest, Neural Networks and Gradient Boosting to perform regression on wind data for long periods of time. Three wind farms in the northeast Brazil have been investigated, whose data sets were constructed from the wind farms data collections and the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET). Statistical analyses of the wind data and the optimization of the trained predictors were conducted, as well as several quantitative assessments of the obtained forecast results.

Abstract
The present work aims to compare several load disaggregation methods. While the supervised alternative was found to be the most competent, the semi-supervised is proved to be close in terms of potential, while the unsupervised alternative seems insufficient. By the same token, the tests with long-lasting data prove beneficial to confirm the long-term performance since no significant loss of performance is noticed with the scalar of the time-horizon. Finally, the patchwork of new parametrization and methodology fine-tuning also proves interesting for improving global performance in several methods.