The electricity pricing structure in Texas has changed after deregulation (January 2002). The Energy Systems Laboratory has served as a technical consultant on electricity purchases to several universities in the Texas A&M University System since 2001. In the fiscal year of 2006 Stephen F. Austin State University joined with the TAMU campuses and agencies, and there are now 183 accounts in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) North, Northeast, South, West, and Houston areas of Texas. From the 183 accounts, 9 Interval Data Recorder (IDR) accounts consume 92% of the total load. The objective of this research is to find the most economic price structure to purchase electricity for the Texas A&M System and Stephen F. Austin University by analyzing various pricing scenarios: the spot market, forward contracts, take or pay contracts and on/off season (tiered) contracts. The analysis was based on the 9 IDR accounts. The prices for the spot market were given by ERCOT and the other prices by Sempra. The energy charges were calculated every 15 minute using the real historical consumption of each facility and the aggregated load of all facilities. The result for the analysis was given for each institution separately, as well as for the aggregated load of all facilities. The results of the analysis showed that the tiered price was the most economical structure to purchase electricity for each individual university and for the total aggregated load of all 9 IDR accounts. From March 1, 2005 to February 28, 2006, purchasing electricity on the tiered price would have cost $13,810,560. The forward contract, that is, purchasing electricity on a fixed rate, was the next cheapest with an energy cost of $14,266,870 from March 1, 2005 to February 28, 2006, 3% higher than purchasing electricity at the tiered price. The most expensive method to purchase electricity would have been the spot market. Its energy costs would have been approximately $18,171,610, 36% and 31% higher, respectively, than purchasing electricity at the tiered price and the fixed rate.

Wheat is the most common cereal crop grown by farmers in Western Canada and is mainly used for export. The marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada is unique. The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a statutory marketing board, is mandated to sell all wheat grown by farmers for human consumption in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River region of British Columbia. Using historical price and basis data, this research attempts to quantify the economics of the current marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada. Simulations are developed to determine the economic profits and risk that could have been realized in an open market considering scenarios for three potential changes in the grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) and four alternative marketing strategies. Each are evaluated using a utility-based risk model to ascertain the most preferred marketing environment in terms of expected profit and risk.

Wheat is the most common cereal crop grown by farmers in Western Canada and is mainly used for export. The marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada is unique. The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a statutory marketing board, is mandated to sell all wheat grown by farmers for human consumption in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Peace River region of British Columbia. Using historical price and basis data, this research attempts to quantify the economics of the current marketing structure for wheat in Western Canada. Simulations are developed to determine the economic profits and risk that could have been realized in an open market considering scenarios for three potential changes in the grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) and four alternative marketing strategies. Each are evaluated using a utility-based risk model to ascertain the most preferred marketing environment in terms of expected profit and risk.

Distribution plays a key role in telecommunication and computing systems today. It has become a necessity as a result of deregulation and anti-trust legislation, which has forced businesses to move from centralised, monolithic systems to distributed systems with the separation of applications and provisioning technologies, such as the service and transportation layers in the Internet. The need for reliability and recovery requires systems to use replication and secondary backup systems such as those used in ecommerce. There are consequences to distribution. It results in systems being implemented in heterogeneous environment; it requires systems to be scalable; it results in some loss of control and so this contributes to the increased security issues that result from distribution. Each of these issues has to be dealt with. A distributed processing environment (DPE) is middleware that allows heterogeneous environments to operate in a homogeneous manner. Scalability can be addressed by using object-oriented technology to distribute functionality. Security is more difficult to address because it requires the creation of a distributed trusted environment. The problem with security in a DPE currently is that it is treated as an adjunct service, i.e. and after-thought that is the last thing added to the system. As a result, it is not pervasive and therefore is unable to fully support the other DPE services. DPE security needs to provide the five basic security services, authentication, access control, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation, in a distributed environment, while ensuring simple and usable administration. The research, detailed in this thesis, starts by highlighting the inadequacies of the existing DPE and its services. It argues that a new management structure was introduced that provides greater flexibility and configurability, while promoting mechanism and service independence. A new secure interoperability framework was introduced which provides the ability to negotiate common mechanism and service level configurations. New facilities were added to the non-repudiation and audit services. The research has shown that all services should be security-aware, and therefore would able to interact with the Enhanced Security Service in order to provide a more secure environment within a DPE. As a proof of concept, the Trader service was selected. Its security limitations were examined, new security behaviour policies proposed and it was then implemented as a Security-aware Trader, which could counteract the existing security limitations.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

published_or_final_version / abstract / China Development Studies / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

No description available.

Extensive deregulation of the Australian financial system officially began in the early 1980s. Since 1979 there have been three inquiries into the Australian financial system. The Campbell, Martin and Wallis Inquiries all supported the notion of deregulation of the Australian financial system. Many of their recommendations focused on allowing the market to determine market outcomes without jeopardising stability. Reform to the system was expected to provide a number of benefits, including increased competition and efficiency. Due to the limited quantity of quality data, research in this area has been limited. This thesis attempts to address issues that have not been adequately dealt with in the current literature by creating a database of financial bank data and using that data to analyse the effects that deregulation has had on the banking industry with respect to competition, efficiency and overall industry profitability.