Abstract
The power system is facing a transition from its traditional centralized model to a more decentralized one, through the emergence of proactive consumers on the network, known as prosumers. This paradigm shift favors the emergence of new electricity market designs. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) based structures have been gaining prominence worldwide. In the P2P market, the prosumer assumes a more active role in the system, being able to directly trade its energy without the need for intermediaries. This paper contributes with a comprehensive overview of consumer-centric electricity markets, providing background on different aspects of P2P sharing, in particular the inclusion of peer preferences in the electricity trading process through product differentiation. A performance assessment of the different modeled preferences was carried out using key performance indicators (KPIs). Different user preferences under the product differentiation mechanism were simulated. The results demonstrate that consumer-centric markets increase the penetration of renewable energy sources into the network and tend to affect loads flexibility according to the renewable generation.

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Nontechnical losses in electricity distribution networks are often associated with a countries’ socioeconomic situation. Although the amount of global losses is usually known, the separation between technical and commercial (nontechnical) losses will remain one of the main challenges for DSO until smart grids become fully implemented and operational. The most common origins of commercial losses are energy theft and deliberate or accidental failures of energy measuring equipment. In any case, the consequences can be regarded as consumption anomalies. The work described in this paper aims to answer a request from a DSO, for the development of tools to detect consumption anomalies at end-customer facilities (HV, MV and LV), invoking two types of assessment. The first consists of the identification of typical patterns in the set of consumption profiles of a given group or zone and the detection of atypical consumers (outliers) within it. The second assessment involves the exploration of the load diagram evolution of each specific consumer to detect changes in the consumption pattern that could represent situations of probable irregularities. After a representative period, typically 12 months, these assessments are repeated, and the results are compared to the initial ones. The eventual changes in the typical classes or consumption scales are used to build a classifier indicating the risk of anomaly.

Abstract
Soil Moisture (SM) is one of the most critical factors for a crop’s growth, yield, and quality. Although Ground-Penetrating RADAR (GPR) is commonly used in satelite observation to analyze soil moisture, it is not cost-effective for agricultural applications. Automotive RADAR uses the concept of Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and is more competitive in terms of price. This paper evaluates the viability of using a cost-effective RADAR as a substitute for GPR for soil moisture content estimation. The research consisted of four experiments, and the results show that the RADAR’s output signal and the soil moisture sensor SEN0193 have a high correlation with values as high as 0.93 when the SM is below 15%. Such results show that the tested sensor (and its cost-effective working principle) are able to determine soil water content (with certain limitations) in a non-intrusive, proximal sensing manner.

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