Effects of Upside Risk on Microgrids' Reliability Considering the COVID-19 Pandemic

The power systems in the areas of human resources and customer demand were greatly impacted by COVID-19 due to a series of restrictions on human movements, lockdowns of factories, and several job losses during the period. In situations like this, the use of microgrids may help attain a balance in the consumption and generation of power, thereby leading to customer satisfaction. The energy resources' optimal power scheduling in a standalone microgrid, taking into consideration the upside risk (UR), is proposed in this work. The standalone microgrid is made up of different energy resources such as a diesel generator (DSG), photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine (WT), and battery storage system (BSS). In this paper, the energy not supplied (ENS) is minimized in standalone mode by considering the effects of COVID-19. The UR is the change between the actual and target ENS when the target ENS is greater than the actual. Also, COVID-19 led to a significant reduction in the ENS. © 2023 IEEE.

Upside Risk Effect on Reliability of Microgrids Considering Demand Response Program and COVID-19: An Investigation on Health System and Power System Interactions

COVID-19 has a vast impact on the power systems considering the customers' demand and human resources. During this situation, the utilization of microgrids (MGs) may help the power systems balance the generation and consumption of power, which leads to customer satisfaction. In this paper, the optimal power scheduling of energy sources in an islanded MG by considering the upside risk (UR) is proposed for the very first time. The intended islanded MG consists of various sources such as wind turbine (WT), photovoltaic (PV), diesel generator (DGR), and battery. The goals of this work are minimizing the energy not supplied (ENS) in islanded mode considering the COVID-19's effect and implementing the demand response program (DRP). The difference between target ENS and actual ENS when actual ENS is less than the target is defined as UR. The results indicate that the UR related to the ENS of the islanded MG decreases significantly by slightly increasing the ENS. Moreover, COVID-19 decreases the ENS considerably and has a bigger effect than the DRP. © 2022 IEEE.

Outperformance of the pharmaceutical sector during the COVID-19 pandemic: Global time-varying screening rule development.

This study demonstrates the major role played by the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, it provides evidence of a better risk-return relationship in these sectors through a multivariate study of monthly frequency. A global and dynamic ratio is developed to summarize different investor profiles according to their attitude toward risk and to consider the dynamic and changing nature of the economy and financial markets. This global ratio synthesizes the information from different orders of Kappa indices and Farinelli-Tibiletti ratios into a single measure. Additionally, we verify that Principal Component Analysis allows summarizing the information contained in the initial variables from the first new component. Our findings confirm that a filtering asset screening rule strategy is relevant and necessary. In this respect, passive management of midterm equal-weighted pharmaceutical portfolios outperforms both the pure financial and the healthcare investment strategies used during the pandemic.