Peter M. Schwarz

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Electric utilities are challenging net metering, which compensates owners of residential solar photovoltaic systems by crediting solar generation at the retail rate instead of reflecting the value of solar to the utility. In 2012, Austin Energy was the first US utility to replace net metering with Buy-All, Sell-All, where prosumers purchase all ele...

Low participation rates in existing US stormwater utility fee credit programs indicate that the benefits attributed to credits are not being realized, most notably, the financial incentive for private property owners to control stormwater on their sites. This is problematic if credits are to be used to achieve the level of private property particip...

FERC 745 order has created an environment that allows Demand Response (DR) owners to sell their load reduction in the wholesale market. One of the main challenges that ISOs and utilities face is developing Customer Baseline Load (CBL) calculation methods that work satisfactorily in this new environment. Consequently, it is critical that these metho...

The electricity market is threatened by supply scarcity, which may lead to very sharp price spikes in the spot market. On the other hand, demand-side's activities could effectively mitigate the supply scarcity and absorb most of these shocks and therefore smooth out the price volatility. In this paper, the positive effects of employing demand respo...

The electricity market is threatened by supply scarcity, which may lead to very sharp price spikes in the spot market. On the other hand, demand-side's activities could effectively mitigate the supply scarcity and absorb most of these shocks and therefore smooth out the price volatility. In this paper, the positive effects of employing demand respo...

This paper investigates the impact of CBL's performance on PTR programs offered to the residential customers. For the purpose of analysis, HighXofY (NYISO), exponential moving average (ISONE), regression methods and their adjusted forms are first introduced and then employed to calculate the CBL. Irish Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) smart m...

This paper proposes an economic model for the demand response which can explain the change and the cross-period shift in consumption pattern of individual consumers. The objective of the proposed model is to maximize the customer utility constrained by either the daily budget or daily consumption. To develop the proposed model, first, the customer...

Using data from Charlotte, NC, a New South city without a legacy of heavily contaminated properties, we find the distance from unremediated brownfields-typically former industrial properties believed to have modest contamination-to have no effect on residential sales values, but proposed cleanup and actual remediation have positive, substantial, an...

Demand response (DR) programs enable the demand side to actively optimize its consumption in response to the dynamic prices. The flexibility of consumption can be a useful tool for the electricity market to resolve many of its operation and reliability issues. Several models have been proposed in the literature to explain the human behavior aspect...

Saving water saves energy. Consequently, implementing integrated water management (IWM) measures that reduce potable water consumption, stormwater runoff, and wastewater generation can potentially translate into significant energy savings. In this paper, the energy savings associated with IWM measures of rainwater harvesting and gray-water reuse ar...

This article explores the use of alternative payment mechanisms to overcome the holdout problem when multiple parcels of land must be acquired to complete a real-estate development project. Purchase offers contingent upon successful land aggregation are compared to combination offers containing both guaranteed and contingent payments to determine w...

The purpose of this research is to estimate the potential effect of carbon pricing on the purchase of energy efficient appliances, using refrigerators as a representative appliance. Carbon emissions are widely believed to be contributing to climate change, although the U.S. has not yet introduced a nationwide method of limiting these emissions (two...

In the aftermath of Fukushima, decisions to slow or stop the future use of nuclear power have not been based on rational economic analysis. We find that there are cost‐effective technologies that would greatly mitigate future natural disasters. Even if the U.S. nuclear industry adopted new safety technologies and paid the full cost of insurance and...

Using a generalized McFadden specification, we estimate the determinants of hourly response for the years 2006 through 2010 for all 16 standard retail customers who were on an optional real-time electricity rate offered by Duke Energy as of 2010, and provide a method to estimate how these customers would respond to time-of-use (TOU) and flat rates....

This study uses California data to compare redevelopment for properties subject to mandatory and voluntary cleanup. CalSites are subject to the CERCLA liability approach, while properties in the Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP) are subject to a risk-based approach (RBA) that allows some contamination to remain for non-residential redevelopment. The...

We develop a model of the household that includes pets. We use over twenty years of data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to consider pet ownership and expenditures for single and married households. Households with very young children are less likely to own pets and have lower pet expenditures, showing a substitute relationship. Households wit...

This paper provides hourly own and cross price elasticities for industrial customers with up to 8 years of experience on Duke Power optional real-time rates. We include the effects of customer characteristics and temperature conditions. Aggregated results show larger own elasticities than have previous studies, complementarity within the potential...

This study contains a simulation of a coal-fired electric plant subject to multiple pollutant standards for SO-sub-2 and NO-sub-x. It shows that firms may not choose the lowest cost technology. The firm's cost-minimizing choice is compared for three increasingly stringent standards: the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, the 1997 New Source Performance...

After describing an innovative technology, the close-coupled gasification and cyclonic combustor, this article explores the policy issues that inhibit a superior sustainable solution from flourishing. Discussion of technology includes defining biomass, explaining what biomass to energy means, what the advantages of biomass to energy are, and why ga...

Real-time pricing reduces summer peak demand by approximately 8% for 110 Duke Energy industrial customers. With up to six summers on the rate, the aggregate customer response increases with experience. Examining individual customers, only a subset respond significantly, primarily those who can self-generate or with discrete (batch) production proce...

Many utilities are offering real-time pricing (RTP) to their large industrial customers. Under RTP, hourly rates change with real-time supply and demand. As compared to fixed rates, RTP shifts price risk from the utility to the customer. With such a change, it is natural to ask if there is an optimal level of advance notice of prices. This paper co...

Insulation reduces marginal heating cost and may lead to a takeback effect of higher wintertime thermostat settings, with a consequent dilution of energy savings. Alternatively, additional insulation could permit a lower thermostat setting by reducing drafts and radiation while increasing moisture retention, thereby enhancing comfort. This paper ev...

Modifications in demand due to time-of-use (TOU) pricing have potential to improve the efficiency of electric power supply. With long lead times for plant construction, utility planners need long-run estimates of response to TOU rates. Existing evidence is primarily drawn from short-run TOU experiments. We provide estimates of long-run response to...

This paper reviews a previously offered model of electricity load management containing uncertainties. This analysis allows individual customer demand to fluctuate within a billing period. Also, it allows diversity or imperfect correlation among customer demands. The behavioral effects are examined for a fuse that allows utilities and customers to...

Demand charges account for one-third to one-half of industrial and commercial electricity bills, and yet they have been virtually ignored, both theoretically and practically, as a component of residential tariffs. Our objective here is twofold: (1) to model and test the effects of a time-of-use demand charge on residential consumer behavior and (2)...

INDUSTRIAL electricity tariffs usually contain two types of consumption-related charges-the energy charge, assessed on total kilowatthours, and the demand (or capacity) charge, assessed on maximum kilowatts. Both charges can be differentiated by time of day, applying a premium to kilowatts and kilowatthours consumed during specified peak hours. The...