Abstract
With the advent of power system restructuring, there is now competition on the generation activity and the generation mix changed in many countries with the incentives to induce investments in renewables, in many cases, using volatile primary resources. Given this increase of the installed capacity in wind parks and PV stations as well as in hydro stations (as a way to address the mentioned volatility), investments in large thermal stations became more risky. In this scope, this paper describes a long term generation expansion planning model that can be used by generation companies to investigate the profitability of new thermal generation investments considering the increasing presence of renewables. This long term simulation tool uses System Dynamics, a framework particularly suited to mode the long term dependencies between different variables while incorporating delays on some decisions. At a final section this paper includes a Case Study based on a generation system that corresponds to a scaled version of the Portuguese system.

Abstract
This paper addresses the provision of ancillary services in Portugal and Spain in the scope of the Common Iberian Electricity market. The paper reviews the definitions and the international practice regarding ancillary services with emphasis on primary, secondary and tertiary reserves and describes the procedures adopted by the Portuguese and Spanish TSO's to procure and allocate reserve levels. On the other hand, the paper discusses the models that can be used to enlarge the integration of the reserve markets, namely regarding tertiary reserve. Using data from 2009, the paper presents the results of the simulations that were performed for several situations including an ideal unlimited interconnection capacity, the existing interconnection capacity and an interconnection capacity increased by 300 MW. The results obtained indicate that the adoption of a common tertiary reserve list would ultimately be beneficial for the consumers since the cost of tertiary reserve would be reduced. However, a larger integration and cooperation between the two TSO's would be clearly required. © 2011 IEEE.

Abstract
This paper describes a hybrid approach in which generation cost and demand uncertainties are represented by fuzzy numbers and the life cycle of system components is modeled by probabilistic models. The Monte Carlo simulation model is used to sample system states according to the failure rates of the system components and a Fuzzy DC OPF model is used to analyse each sampled state. This Fuzzy DC OPF model adopts multi-parametric optimization techniques and admits that loads, generation costs or both of them simultaneously are modeled using fuzzy numbers. At the end of this process, it is possible to compute estimates of the Power Not Supplied and also of the exposure and robustness indices that characterize the ability that the system has to accommodate the specified uncertainties. This information can then be used to characterize the ability each reinforcement has in increasing the robustness of the system. Finally, the paper includes results for two case studies. On of them is based on a 6 bus system and the second uses the IEEE 24 bus/38 branch test system to illustrate the developed approaches. © 2010 IEEE.

Abstract
Investments in new generation, specially in renewables, grew up in several countries contributing to change the generation mix. Among these new technologies, wind power became an important source in the sense that the share in installed capacity is large in countries as Germany, Denmark, Spain and Portugal namely considering the prices paid to the generated power. These subsidizing schemes are in several cases responsible for a large amount of the final end user costs meaning that in the future new ways of integrating this power in the grid have to be adopted. This means that for investors it is important to evaluate from a economic point of view the interest of new wind power projects admitting changes in current tariff schemes. For regulatory agencies it is also important to investigate the impact of changes in current schemes. This paper details an approach to characterize this type of investments in terms of the Net Present Value, NPV, and the Internal Return Rate, IRR, so that more sounded investment and policy decisions are adopted. © 2010 IEEE.

Abstract
This paper describes part of the research developed by the Power Systems Unit of INESC Porto in the scope of the MoreMicrogrids EU financed project (under the Contract No: PL019864). In this project, and apart from other issues, it was investigated how microgrid agents could participate in a more effective way in electricity markets. In this paper we present models to enable the participation of microgrid agents in the provision of ancillary services, namely reactive power/voltage control, active loss balancing and demand interruption. This participation is accomplished after running the day-ahead market and it corresponds to the activation of a specific market to allocate these services. The implementation of this kind of models can contribute to create a new stream of money to microgrid agents so that they can integrate themselves in a more natural way in power systems, eventually eliminating subsidized tariffs that represent in several countries an increasing amount of the final end user tariffs. Finally, the paper includes a Case Study to illustrate the use of the developed approaches. © 2010 IEEE.

Abstract
Marginal prices have been recognized as the core approach to the economic evaluation of generation and transmission services in an electricity market environment. In this context, this paper presents the New Fuzzy Optimal Power Flow algorithm as a model to addresses the impact of load and generation cost uncertainties in nodal marginal prices. Since loads and generation costs are represented by fuzzy numbers, nodal marginal prices will no longer be represented by deterministic values, but rather by fuzzy membership functions reflecting the specified uncertainties. The paper also presents the algorithm used for the integration of the transmission losses effect on the results. Since the proposed algorithm uses multiparametric programming techniques, it contributes to characterize in a better way the system behavior. Finally, it includes results based on the IEEE 24 bus/38 branch test system to illustrate the proposed approach.