This thesis reports experimental and theoretical studies of the laminar burning velocity of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) measured using the constant volume bomb method. The test rig designed at Loughborough University was a rigid and spherical chamber with central ignition. The LPG gas used in this study is a mixture of propane and n-butane with volume percentage of n-butane ranging from 0 to 100. The laminar burning velocities of the LPG/air mixtures have been determined over a range of equivalence ratios (0.7 to 1.4), unburnt gas pressures and temperatures (0.5 to 37 bar and 293 to 530 K respectively). With the measured pressure/time history in the constant volume combustion chamber, a new combustion model, which was developed based on a commonly used two-zone combustion model, was used to determine the laminar burning velocity. To obtain a more accurate value of the laminar burning velocity, the assumptions in the two-zone combustion model were analysed, and two effects were considered in the new combustion model, i.e. the effect of flame thickness and the effect of temperature gradient in the burnt gas zone.

Policy makers are increasingly encouraging households to save electricity, so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, such encouragements may be ineffective if consumers are unaware of how much electricity is used by different appliances, such as their laptop, air conditioner, or washing machine. The main aim of this thesis is to understand and inform consumers' perceptions of their electricity consumption used by their appliances. The literature review demonstrated that consumers appear to have misperceptions of their energy use. It also showed that there is only limited number of studies in this domain and that there is a lack of wider theoretical framework. This literature review underlines several methodological shortcomings in previous studies, including: (i) consumers’ perceptions of electricity use by appliance is evaluated in comparison to their self-reported or estimated use rather than to their actual use; (ii) consumers report their perceptions of electricity use after reviewing only one reference point that may influence their judgements; (iii) most studies ask participants to express their electricity use in kilowatt-hours even though consumers prefer to see their electricity expressed in a ‘money’ format; (iv) participants report their electricity use for different time periods (i.e., per month or per hour), which makes it difficult to compare findings across studies. In order to address existing gaps in the literature, this thesis has four key research questions: 1.Will different reporting units (kWh vs. money) influence consumers’ judgments about electricity use compared to their actual use as measured at the appliance level? (Study 1; Study 3) 2.Will the provision of single or multiple reference points influence consumers’ judgments about electricity use? (Study 2A) 3.Which set of multiple reference points influence consumers’ judgments about electricity use? (Study 2B) 4.Will different time periods (hour vs. month) influence consumers’ judgments about electricity use? (Study 3) The key findings across the three studies confirmed that consumers may not be aware of how much electricity is used by specific appliances in their household. When asked to express their estimates in energy units over monthly time periods, consumers underestimated the use of higher consuming appliances such as air conditioners and dishwashers while overestimated the use of lower consuming appliances such as TVs and mobile phone chargers. When asked to express their estimates in monetary units over hourly time periods, consumers overestimated the use for all appliances. Furthermore, consumers’ accuracy of perceptions is higher when electricity use is assed in energy units in comparison to monetary units (Study 1 and 3), and when it is assessed over monthly time periods in comparison to hourly ones (Study 3). The theoretical contribution of this thesis is that it builds on findings from behavioural decision-making, especially the use of different heuristics to understand how consumers make judgments about their electricity use. It also applies existing theories of reference points to the domain of energy use. For example, participants may have used reference points to adjust their estimates, following the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Also, providing participants with a single low or multiple reference points showed that distributional information helped them to make more accurate judgements about their electricity use (Study 2A). The methodological contributions of this thesis are two-fold. First, by having more accurate and precise measures of actual energy use I was able to assess the discrepancies between actual and perceived electricity use. This is the first time in this domain that electricity consumption has been measured by using sub-meter data for each appliance (Study 1). Second, I examined whether there is a difference in observed main effects when using actual electricity data (gathered through Pecan Research Institute) and estimated electricity data provided from secondary data (Study 1). My findings showed that the main effects remained similar which means that estimated data can be used as a reliable data source in certain situations where is not possible to obtain a measure of real-time electricity data. The practical contribution is that a better understanding of consumers’ judgement processes can potentially improve communications about their electricity use through electricity bills and in-home displays. For example, higher energy consuming appliances should be displayed more vividly (i.e. attention grabbing and colourful labels or design solutions) when developing effective feedback design because consumers tend to underestimate their electricity use. Also, when participants are trying to decide which appliance to upgrade or assess where to replace one with a more efficient model they should focus on their energy use over monthly time periods. Another contribution is that multiple reference points should be included while presenting information about specific appliance electricity use to improve the accuracy of those perceptions.

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Electricity Supply Industries world-wide are undergoing major structural changes with the fundamental objective of introducing competition and choice in electricity supply in the belief that this will lead to lower electricity prices and improved quality of service. A key feature of the emerging industry structure is the separation of the generation, transmission, distribution and retail (supply) segments of the electric energy business into autonomous business units. Prices in the generation and supply segments are determined through suitable market mechanisms, whereas those in the monopoly segments of transmission and distribution are regulated. Interaction between all these business units is through commercial contracts. An essential condition for competition to develop is open access, on a non-discriminatory basis, to transmission and distribution networks by all players in the energy market. Pricing of transmission and distribution networks is the central issue in the concept of open access. This research summarises the main problems faced by present network pricing arrangements in a deregulated environment and presents a framework for the development of a more equitable pricing concept which seeks to satisfy the principal objectives of economic efficiency, revenue generation as well as transparent and stable prices. The proposed framework is based on the concept of the reference network (also known as the economically adapted network). In the proposed approach the network pricing problem is treated as a two-stage process comprising determination of allowable costs (and hence revenue) based on the reference network followed by allocation of these costs to users of the network in a cost reflective manner using marginal cost pricing principles. Due to differences in network characteristics, investment and operating cost drivers are different in transmission and distribution systems requiring different approaches to network pricing in the two systems. To determine optimal transmission prices, a multi-period model is developed for determining optimal transmission capacity by minimising total annual generator operating and annuitised transmission investment costs subject to deterministic network security constraints, Kirchhofrs current and voltage laws, line thermal and generator output limits. The model employs the DC formulation of the power flow problem and applies Ben~ers decomposition to solve the resulting very large-scale optimisation problem. Optimal time-of-use location-specific transmission network tariffs are derived and their practical application demonstrated on the IEEE 24-bus Reliability Test System. Three methods for allocating losses in transmission and distribution systems are developed. Particular emphasis is placed on economic efficiency and equitable treatment of players in the energy market place, especially the promotion of fair competition between central and dispersed generation. A framework is established for development of loss-driven network use-of-system charges for distribution networks with dispersed generation. Application of the proposed. distribution use-of-system charges is demonstrated on a 281-node generic distribution system model. A conceptual model is developed for determining optimal performance driven investment and operating costs by balancing these costs with customer outage costs. The direction for future research in the area of network pricing is identified to be the development of methods and techniques ~o support the concept of reference network business in which customer driven quality of service requirements will be the main issue.

In this thesis, we present a methodology for assessing the economic impact of power storage technologies. The methodology is founded on classical approaches to the optimal stopping of stochastic processes. Power storage is regarded as a complement to the intermittent output of renewable energy generators, and is important in contributing to the reduction of carbon intensive power generation. Therefore, the recommendations to study the future economic storage assessment have been increased. Our aim is to present a methodology suitable for use by policy makers that is simple to maintain, adapt to different technologies and is easy to interpret. The thesis start by giving an overview of the UK power market and an introduction to storage technologies in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 summarize the mathematical tools, that the methodology is based on, more precisely the discretionary stopping theory based on dynamic programming techniques. An algorithm to assess the storage is presented in Chapter 4, where the storage problem is formulated as an entry, exit problem, which allow the investigation of different optimal strategies to fill and empty a storage facility. An analysis of power demand, and an approximation of power prices through the merit order curve of the UK power market presented in Chapter 5. Based on a theoretical study, the methodology is applied to a Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 present an empirical study that applied the methodology directly on the observed data, this approach is shown to have benefits over current techniques and is able to value, by identifying a viable optimal operational strategy for a CAES operating in the UK market.

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District heating (DH) has the potential to play an important role in enabling a transition to a low carbon, affordable and secure energy system, because of its ability to utilise renewable and waste heat sources as well as to provide a means for energy storage and flexibility. Countries new to DH, such as Great Britain, are looking to establish innovations in governance structures, business models, and policy approaches to overcome the numerous and complex barriers that exist for increasing deployment of DH. This thesis uses socio-technical transitions literatures to explore a case study of DH development in Great Britain, an example of a liberalised energy market and centralised energy system. ‘Niches’ are highlighted in the literature as playing an important role in enabling transitions. The processes that take place within niches enable the creation of a protected space where an innovation can be demonstrated and developed. Niche processes also act as a catalyst for driving change in the wider ‘regime’ of established norms and practices that have formed around the incumbent technology configuration. However, debate continues within the socio-technical transitions literature about how actors can develop the agency to govern for more radical change. Using analysis of case study data, this work considers the potential of actors from across the sectors to utilise different governing measures to support niche processes and drive a transition to DH. The work shows that effective governing measures develop the capacities of niche actors to exploit tensions in the incumbent regime and enable strategic development of DH at the local level. This requires support from actors across geographical scales and sectors. However, actors’ agency to govern a transition is strongly influenced by dynamics in the incumbent regime. Support for niche processes needs to be complemented with activities to bring about destabilisation of the incumbent regime.

Stated preference techniques are widely used to evaluate an individual’s preferences in the context of environmental economics. The aim of this thesis is to explore the use of different stated preference methods to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for micro-generation solar systems. The case study setting is North Cyprus. Households’ preferences and choices for generating electricity on their premises were assessed using contingent valuation (CV) and choice experiments (CEs). CV was employed to estimate individuals’ WTP for micro-generation solar technology, and also willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for loss of amenity and feed-in tariff. The data comprised a survey of 369 individuals through the face-to-face interviews. The survey was split between two separate CV experiments, one using open-ended questions, and the other in the double-bounded format. A Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) incentive compatible experimental approach was adopted with a cheap-talk to reduce strategic behaviour and hypothetical biases. Additionally, a CE survey of 205 respondents was carried out to evaluate the attributes that influence respondents’ choices in the adoption of micro-generation solar panels. The attributes comprised a government subsidy, feed-in tariff, investment cost, energy savings, and the space required for installation. Respondents were asked to choose their most preferred alternative from two hypothetical scenarios of attributes and the status quo (do nothing). One of the important findings of this thesis is the significance of the suggested experimental approach, which enabled the convergence of WTA/WTP values. The contribution of this thesis relies on the use of BDM with CV, as well as the CE, to value ii preferences for micro-generation solar panel adoption. This is the first application of the BDM and CE methods to evaluate solar technology in Northern Cyprus.