Prediction Model of Weekly Retail Price for Eggs Based on Chaotic Neural Network

This paper establishes a short-term prediction model of weekly retail prices for eggs based on chaotic neural network with the weekly retail prices of eggs from January 2008 to December 2012 in China.In the process of determining the structure of the chaotic neural network,the number of input layer nodes of the network is calculated by reconstructing phase space and computing its saturated embedding dimension,and then the number of hidden layer nodes is estimated by trial and error.Finally,this model is applied to predict the retail prices of eggs and compared with ARIMA.The result shows that the chaotic neural network has better nonlinear fitting ability and higher precision in the prediction of weekly retail price of eggs.The empirical result also shows that the chaotic neural network can be widely used in the field of short-term prediction of agricultural prices.

Investing and Pricing with Supply Uncertainty in Electricity Market:A General View Combining Wholesale and Retail Market

Renewable energy,such as wind and solar energy,may vary signifi cantly over time and locations depending on the weather and the climate conditions.This leads to the supply uncertainty in the electricity(power) market with renewable energy integrated to power grid.In this paper,electricity in the market is classified into two types:stablesupply electricity(SSE) and unstablesupply electricity(USE).We investigate the investment and pricing strategies under the electricity supply uncertainty in wholesale and retail electricity market.In particular,our model combines the wholesale and retail market and capture the dominant players,i.e.,consumers,power plant(power operator),and electricity supplier.To derive the market behaviors of these players,we formulate the market decision problems as a multistage Stackelberg game.By solving the game model,we obtain the optimal,with closedform,wholesale investment and retail pricing strategy for the operator.We also obtain the energy supplier's best price mechanism numerically under certain assumption.We fi nd the price of SSE being about 1.4 times higher than that of USE will benefi t energy supplieroptimally,under which power plant's optimal strategy of investing is to purchase USE about 4.5 times much more than SSE.

Uniformity Analysis for Index of Retail Price

Using the Hodges Ajne testing method, the uniformity of China retail price index was tested. The result, that population is submitting to uniform distribution, was obtained. The uniformity of CRPI indicates that the general price level is stable in the Ninth Five Year Plan. Finally, the reasons causing the uniformity was analyzed.

Demand Responsive Market Decision-Makings and Electricity Pricing Scheme Design in Low-Carbon Energy System Environment

The two-way interaction between smart grid and customers will continuously play an important role in enhan-cing the overall efficiency of the green and low-carbon electric power industry and properly accommodating intermittent renewable energy resources.Thus far,the existing electricity pricing mechanisms hardly match the technical properties of smart grid;neither can they facilitate increasing end users participating in the electri-city market.In this paper,several relevant models and novel methods are proposed for pricing scheme design as well as to achieve optimal decision-makings for market participants,in which the mechanisms behind are com-patible with demand response operation of end users in the smart grid.The electric vehicles and prosumers are jointly considered by complying with the technical constraints and intrinsic economic interests.Based on the demand response of controllable loads,the real-time pricing,rewarding pricing and insurance pricing methods are proposed for the retailers and their bidding decisions for the wholesale market are also presented to increase the penetration level of renewable energy.The proposed demand response oriented electricity pricing scheme can provide some useful operational references on the cooperative operation of controllable loads and renewable energy through the feasible retail and wholesale market pricing methods,and thereby enhancing the development of the low-carbon energy system.

Energy Procurement and Retail Pricing for Electricity Retailers via Deep Reinforcement Learning with Long Short-term Memory

The joint optimization problem of energy procurement and retail pricing for an electricity retailer is converted into separately determining the optimal procurement strategy and optimal pricing strategy,under the“price-taker”assumption.The aggregate energy consumption of end use customers(EUCs)is predicted to solve for the optimal procurement strategy vis a long short-term memory(LSTM)-based supervised learning method.The optimal retail pricing problem is formulated as a Markov decision process(MDP),which can be solved by using deep reinforcement learning(DRL)algorithms.However,the performance of existing DRL approaches may deteriorate due to their insufficient ability to extract discriminative features from the time-series vectors in the environmental states.We propose a novel deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG)network structure with a shared LSTM-based representation network that fully exploits the Actor’s and Critic’s losses.The designed shared representation network and the joint loss function can enhance the environment perception capability of the proposed approach and further improve the optimization performance,resulting in a more profitable pricing strategy.Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

China Apparel Retail Sales slowed down but price picking

China in the rst two months of2013-Apparel retail sales value in50major retailenterprises only increased by6.4%y/y,growthrate slowed down0.6%than the same periodof last year according to Nation Commer-cial Information Center of China.Growthrate slowed down6.1%than in December2012.Men s suitIn February2013,Comprehensive marketshare of the top ten men's suit brands was30.1percent in the national key major retailenterprises,increased by1.6percentage pointscompared to last month.Among them,Youn-gor and ShanShan still occupied the top twoplaces;Goldlion raised to the third;Playboyand Satchi entered the top ten.Men s shirtIn February2013,Comprehensive marketshare of the top ten men's

Coupon-based Demand Response for Consumers Facing Flat-rate Retail Pricing

Even though smart meters have been widely used in power systems around the world,many consumers are still finding it hard to participate in demand response(DR)due to flat-rate retail pricing policy.To address this issue,this paper proposes a coupon-based demand response(CDR)scheme to achieve equivalent dynamic retail prices to inspire consumers’inherent elasticity.First,a security-constrained unit commitment optimization model is developed in the day-ahead market to obtain coupon rewards,which are then broadcast to consumers to motivate them to reschedule their power consumption behaviors.To evaluate the adjustment value of consumers’power consumption,a collective utility function is proposed to formulate the relationship between power quantity and coupon rewards.On this basis,the security-constrained economic dispatch model is developed in the intra-day market to reschedule generating units’output power according to real-time load demands and fluctuating renewable energies.After the operation interval,a settlement method is developed to quantify consumers’electricity fees and coupon benefits on a monthly basis.The proposed CDR scheme avoids real-time iterative bidding process and effectively decreases the difficulty of massive,small consumers participating in DR.The proposed CDR is implemented in a realistic DR project in China to verify consumers’energy cost and renewables’curtailment can both be decreased.

Price, Tax and Cigarette Smoking： Simulations of China＇s Tobacco Tax Policy

This paper explains the tobacco tax structure and cigarette pricing mechanism in China, develops a general analytical framework for analyzing the Chinese tobacco turnover tax system, and examines the effects of 2009 tobacco tax adjustment on cigarette prices and tax revenue. We find that although the tax is not the most important factor determining cigarette retail prices, the tobacco tax does significantly affect the tobacco industry＇s profits under the current tobacco monopoly system in China. Therefore, the adjustment of the tobacco excise tax in 2009 did not raise cigarette retail prices, instead government tax revenue increased. In other words, the net result of the tax adjustment was a transfer of the tobacco industry＇s profit to government tax revenues. Profit margins ultimately determine cigarette wholesale and retail prices. From the perspective of tobacco control, China needs to reform its tobacco tax system and collect taxes at the retail level to increase overall cigarette retail prices, as well as reduce the government＇s monopolization over cigarette productions and sales.