Scholars@Duke
Dalia Patino-Echeverri

Dalia Patino-Echeverri

Gendell Family Associate Professor
Environmental Sciences and Policy
dalia.patino@duke.edu
Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708-0328
9 Circuit Drive, Env Hall 3118, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Estimating unserved residential space-cooling needs without assuming arbitrary indoor set point temperatures: The case of Mexico

Journal Article Energy for Sustainable Development · April 1, 2024 This paper presents a method to estimate unserved residential space cooling needs in developing countries where the ownership of air conditioners (AC) is constrained by income. The method consists of first uncovering the relationship between weather and ot ... Full text Cite

Identifying Economic and Clean Strategies to Provide Electricity in Remote Rural Areas: Main-Grid Extension vs. Distributed Electricity Generation

Journal Article Energies · January 1, 2023 The policy decision of extending electric power transmission lines to connect a remote area to a primary grid vs. developing local electricity generation resources must be informed by studies considering both alternatives’ economic and environmental outcom ... Full text Cite

Electricity consumption, subsidies, and policy inequalities in Mexico: Data from 100,000 households

Journal Article Energy for Sustainable Development · December 1, 2022 This paper estimates electricity consumption and subsidies for each of the Mexican households surveyed in the ENCEVI and the ENIGH in 2018. Using information from the Mexican Utility Federal Electricity Commission (CFE, Comisión Federal de Electricidad), w ... Full text Cite

Coalition Stability in PJM: Exploring the Consequences of State Defection from the Wholesale Market

Report · November 28, 2022 Using a simulation tool, the authors investigate the effects created by a US state defecting from the wholesale electricity market in PJM, an organized electric grid in the eastern United States, on the states that remain in the coalition. The report finds ... Open Access Link to item Cite

A review of publicly available data sources for models to study renewables integration in China's power system

Journal Article Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews · May 1, 2022 Featured Publication The ongoing transformation of the world's energy system requires detailed power-system models that help plan a cost-effective and reliable integration of variable renewables and demand-side resources. The quality and depth of the results of these models de ... Full text Cite

Effects of environmental regulation on firm entry and exit and China’s industrial productivity: a new perspective on the Porter Hypothesis

Journal Article Environmental Economics and Policy Studies · October 1, 2021 This paper dissects the effects of environmental regulation on the productivity of pollution-intensive industries and by doing so offers a new perspective on the Porter Hypothesis. A theoretical model that incorporates firm’s productivity heterogeneity sho ... Full text Cite

A review of environmental life cycle assessments of diets: Plant-based solutions are truly sustainable, even in the form of fast foods

Journal Article Sustainability (Switzerland) · September 1, 2021 This paper’s purpose is to shed light on the current understanding of the environmental benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets, considering the inclusion of a significant share of processed foods, such as plant-based burgers. We review recent Environmental ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Leveraging Open-Source Tools for Collaborative Macro-energy System Modeling Efforts (Joule (2020) 4(12) (2523–2526), (S2542435120305109), (10.1016/j.joule.2020.11.002))

Journal Article Joule · February 17, 2021 (Joule 4, 2523–2531; December 16, 2020) In the originally published version of this article, author Greg Schivley's surname was spelled incorrectly. This error has been corrected in the online version. The authors regret this error and apologize for any co ... Full text Cite

Utility-scale photovoltaics and storage: Decarbonizing and reducing greenhouse gases abatement costs

Journal Article Applied Energy · January 15, 2021 This study explores the performance of the Duke Energy Carolinas/Progress (DEC/DEP) electric power system under one hundred forty-one configurations combining different capacities of utility-scale photovoltaics (PV) and battery energy storage (lithium-ion ... Full text Cite

Leveraging Open-Source Tools for Collaborative Macro-energy System Modeling Efforts

Journal Article Joule · December 16, 2020 The authors are founding team members of a new effort to develop an Open Energy Outlook for the United States. The effort aims to apply best practices of policy-focused energy system modeling, ensure transparency, build a networked community, and work towa ... Full text Cite

Clustering and dispatching hydro, wind, and photovoltaic power resources with multiobjective optimization of power generation fluctuations: A case study in southwestern China

Journal Article Energy · December 15, 2019 Hydropower can be used to smooth out the output fluctuations from power systems including wind and solar sources. This paper proposes a double-layer model for coordinating the operations of cascaded hydropower and neighboring wind and photovoltaic (PV) fac ... Full text Cite

Quantification of the water-use reduction associated with the transition from coal to natural gas in the US electricity sector

Journal Article Environmental Research Letters · December 4, 2019 The transition from coal to natural gas and renewables in the electricity sector and the rise of unconventional shale gas extraction are likely to affect water usage throughout the US. While new natural-gas power plants use less water than coal-fired power ... Full text Cite

Quality of data for estimating GHG emissions in biofuel regulations is unknown: A review of default values related to sugarcane and corn ethanol

Journal Article Journal of Cleaner Production · December 1, 2019 European and United States' (U.S.) regulatory schemes mandate the use of biofuels based on estimates of life cycle GHG emissions that indicate their environmental superiority compared with conventional fuels. This paper analyzes the quality of the activity ... Full text Cite

Classifying Residential Electricity Demand in Mexico using Random Forest and Multinomial Logistic Regression

Conference 2019 FISE-IEEE/CIGRE Conference - Living the Energy Transition, FISE/CIGRE 2019 · December 1, 2019 This study analyzes the determinants and characteristics that affect the electricity consumption in the Mexican residential sector. This identification is done by applying random forest (RF) and multilinear regression (MLR) methods to find the most influen ... Full text Cite

Abating carbon emissions by means of utility-scale photovoltaics and storage: The Duke Energy Progress/Carolinas case study

Conference 2019 FISE-IEEE/CIGRE Conference - Living the Energy Transition, FISE/CIGRE 2019 · December 1, 2019 This study explores the performance of the Duke Energy Progress/Carolinas (DEC/DEP) electric power system under eighty-five configurations combining different capacities of utility-scale photovoltaics (PV) and energy storage (lithium-ion batteries). The di ... Full text Cite

Combined effects of policies to increase energy efficiency and distributed solar generation: A case study of the Carolinas

Journal Article Energy Policy · November 1, 2019 This paper estimates changes in the cost of electricity, reliability, and atmospheric emissions resulting from large penetration of residential roof-top Photovoltaic (PV) and end-use energy efficiency (EE) within the service areas of Duke Energy in the Car ... Full text Cite

Integrating wind, photovoltaic, and large hydropower during the reservoir refilling period

Journal Article Energy Conversion and Management · October 15, 2019 Hydropower facilities are an ideal solution to complement the intermittent production of energy from wind and solar photovoltaic facilities in electric power systems. However, adding this task to the multiple diverse duties of a reservoir (e.g., flood miti ... Full text Cite

Economic and environmental implications of different approaches to hedge against wind production uncertainty in two-settlement electricity markets: A PJM case study

Journal Article Energy Economics · May 1, 2019 This paper examines the economic and environmental outcomes of four two-settlement electricity market clearing designs. The first design corresponds to a Deterministic Market Clearing (DMC) similar to the mechanism currently used in organized wholesale ele ... Full text Open Access Cite

Effects of population, urbanization, household size, and income on electric appliance adoption in the Chinese residential sector towards 2050

Journal Article Applied Energy · February 15, 2019 We present an analytical framework to project adoption of household electric appliances under a number of scenarios with different levels of population, urbanization, household size, and per-capita income. This framework enables us to estimate the saturati ... Full text Cite

Policies to promote energy efficiency and air emissions reductions in China's electric power generation sector during the 11th and 12th five-year plan periods: Achievements, remaining challenges, and opportunities

Journal Article Energy Policy · February 1, 2019 This paper reviews China's achievements in energy efficiency improvements and air emissions reductions from the electric power sector during the 11th five-year plan (FYP) (2006–2010) and 12th FYP (2011–2015) periods, and discusses the remaining challenges ... Full text Cite

Consumers underestimate the emissions associated with food but are aided by labels

Journal Article Nature Climate Change · January 1, 2019 Food production is a major cause of energy use and GHG emissions, and therefore diet change is an important behavioural strategy for reducing associated environmental impacts. However, a severe obstacle to diet change may be consumers’ underestimation of t ... Full text Cite

OPTIMAL ELECTRICITY SUPPLY SOLUTIONS FOR REMOTE AREAS IN KSA

Conference Energy Proceedings · January 1, 2019 This paper presents a techno-economic evaluation of the electricity generation options available to meet electricity demand in three remote areas not interconnected to the main power grid of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It considers two main alternat ... Cite

Assessing environmental, economic, and reliability impacts of flexible ramp products in MISO's electricity market

Journal Article Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews · January 1, 2018 Increased variability and uncertainty of net electrical load due to high penetration of wind and solar power augments the need for dispatching conventional generators with sufficient ramping capability (RC) needed to balance demand with supply. Having suff ... Full text Cite

Estimating benefits and costs of policies proposed in the 13th FYP to improve energy efficiency and reduce air emissions of China's electric power sector

Journal Article Energy Policy · December 1, 2017 This paper assesses the benefits and costs of five policies seeking to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of China's electric power sector in the 13th five-year plan. It also estimates for each policy, the cost per ton of coal saved and the c ... Full text Cite

Strategic demand-side response to wind power integration

Journal Article IEEE Transactions on Power Systems · September 1, 2016 This paper explores the effects of allowing large, price-responsive consumers to provide reserves in a power system with significant penetration of wind energy. A bilevel optimization model represents the utility maximization problem of a large consumer, s ... Full text Cite

Integrated Solar Combined Cycle Power Plants: Paving the way for thermal solar

Journal Article Applied Energy · May 1, 2016 Integrated Solar Combined Cycle Power Plants (ISCCs), composed of a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant and a Natural Gas-Fired Combined Cycle (NGCC) power plant, have been recently introduced in the power generation sector as a technology with the potent ... Full text Cite

Water Availability for Shale Gas Development in Sichuan Basin, China.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · March 2016 Unconventional shale gas development holds promise for reducing the predominant consumption of coal and increasing the utilization of natural gas in China. While China possesses some of the most abundant technically recoverable shale gas resources in the w ... Full text Cite

Residential Solar PV Systems in the Carolinas: Opportunities and Outcomes.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · February 2016 This paper presents a first-order analysis of the feasibility and technical, environmental, and economic effects of large levels of solar photovoltaic (PV) penetration within the services areas of the Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) and Duke Energy Progress (D ... Full text Cite

An alternate wind power integration mechanism: Coal plants with flexible amine-based CCS

Journal Article Renewable Energy · January 1, 2016 This paper explores a solution to problems associated with two promising technologies for decarbonizing the electricity generation system: high costs of energy penalty of carbon capture and storage, and the intermittency and non-dispatchability of wind pow ... Full text Cite

SynTiSe: A modified multi-regime MCMC approach for generation of wind power synthetic time series

Conference 9th Annual IEEE International Systems Conference, SysCon 2015 - Proceedings · June 2, 2015 The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is widely used for generation of synthetic wind power and wind speed time series, but its application for time resolutions of less than an hour often fails to replicate the autocorrelation (ACF) and probability de ... Full text Cite

Industrial energy efficiency in China: Achievements, challenges and opportunities

Journal Article Energy Strategy Reviews · January 1, 2015 During the years of 2006-2010, corresponding to the 11th Five-Year Plan, China reduced its energy intensity by almost 20%. We review the policy mechanisms - government investment, command-and-control regulation, taxes, and subsidies - China used during thi ... Full text Cite

Environmental implications of United States coal exports: a comparative life cycle assessment of future power system scenarios.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · August 2014 Stricter emissions requirements on coal-fired power plants together with low natural gas prices have contributed to a recent decline in the use of coal for electricity generation in the United States. Faced with a shrinking domestic market, many coal compa ... Full text Cite

The impacts of wind power integration on sub-daily variation in river flows downstream of hydroelectric dams.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · August 2014 Due to their operational flexibility, hydroelectric dams are ideal candidates to compensate for the intermittency and unpredictability of wind energy production. However, more coordinated use of wind and hydropower resources may exacerbate the impacts dams ... Full text Cite

Feasibility of flexible technology standards for existing coal-fired power plants and their implications for new technology development

Journal Article UCLA Law Review · May 1, 2014 This Article explores the feasibility of adding flexibility to mandates for existing power plants in order to foster technology innovation and reduce compliance costs and emissions. Under new and proposed EPA rules a significant portion of the coal-fired e ... Open Access Cite

Day-ahead wind speed prediction by a Neural Network-based model

Journal Article 2014 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference, ISGT 2014 · January 1, 2014 Accurate wind forecasting is valuable for a number of stake holders including farm, system and microgrid operators. The variability and non-linearity of the wind speed/power signal, compounded with the scarcity of time series data, constitute a challenge a ... Full text Cite

An integrated reservoir-power system model for evaluating the impacts of wind integration on hydropower resources

Journal Article Renewable Energy · January 1, 2014 Despite the potential for hydroelectric dams to help address challenges related to the variability and unpredictability of wind energy, at present there are few systems-based wind-hydro studies available in the scientific literature. This work represents a ... Full text Cite

Alternative energy storage for wind power: Coal plants with amine-based CCS

Conference Energy Procedia · January 1, 2014 This paper analyses the performance of a hybrid system consisting of an existing coal plant with post-combustion amine based CCS with amine storage, and a co-located wind farm. The amine storage system allows storage of the CO2-rich amine solution to reduc ... Full text Cite

Economic viability of energy storage systems based on price arbitrage potential in real-time U.S. electricity markets

Journal Article Applied Energy · January 1, 2014 Energy storage systems (ESSs) can increase power system stability and efficiency, and facilitate integration of intermittent renewable energy, but deployment of ESSs will remain limited until they achieve an attractive internal rate of return (IRR). Linear ... Full text Cite

Flexible mandates for investment in new technology

Journal Article Journal of Regulatory Economics · October 1, 2013 Environmental regulators often seek to promote forefront technology for new investments; however, technology mandates are suspected of raising cost and delaying investment. We examine investment choices under an inflexible (traditional) emissions rate perf ... Full text Cite

Fuel prices, emission standards, and generation costs for coal vs natural gas power plants.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · May 2013 Low natural gas prices and stricter, federal emission regulations are promoting a shift away from coal power plants and toward natural gas plants as the lowest-cost means of generating electricity in the United States. By estimating the cost of electricity ... Full text Cite

Optimal size and joint operation of wind power and CCS coal plant with amine storage

Journal Article IIE Annual Conference and Expo 2013 · January 1, 2013 This paper presents a mixed-integer linear optimization model to find the component sizes and operating schedule that maximize the profitability of a hybrid electric power generation unit, consisting of a new wind farm integrated with an existing coal plan ... Cite

Wind power generation in China: Understanding the mismatch between capacity and generation

Journal Article Renewable Energy · May 1, 2012 The Chinese government has made an important effort to diversify the country's energy mix and exploit different sources of renewable energy. Although China's installed wind power capacity has experienced a dramatic expansion over the past five years, elect ... Full text Cite

Reducing the energy penalty costs of postcombustion CCS systems with amine-storage.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · January 2012 Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can significantly reduce the amount of CO(2) emitted from coal-fired power plants but its operation significantly reduces the plant's net electrical output and decreases profits, especially during times of high electricity ... Full text Cite

Reducing the average cost of CO2 capture by shutting-down the capture plant at times of high electricity prices

Journal Article International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control · January 1, 2012 Flexible operation of a CCS plant can lower the cost of foregone electricity sales in competitive wholesale electricity markets but reduces the amount of CO2 captured over the life-time of a CCS plant and increases the capital cost of CCS systems per unit ... Full text Cite

Cost of wind energy: comparing distant wind resources to local resources in the midwestern United States.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · November 2010 The best wind sites in the United States are often located far from electricity demand centers and lack transmission access. Local sites that have lower quality wind resources but do not require as much power transmission capacity are an alternative to dis ... Full text Open Access Cite

Corporate transparency and green management

Journal Article Journal of Business Ethics · February 5, 2010 How can firms support their customers' collaborative, social responsibility initiatives - and especially pro-environmental, firm-customer collaborations? Does corporate transparency affect customers' willingness to undertake pro-environmental collaborative ... Full text Cite

Distortion of probability and outcome information in risky decisions

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · May 1, 2009 Substantial evidence indicates that information is distorted during decision making, but very few studies have assessed the distortion of probability and outcome information in risky decisions. In two studies involving six binary decisions (e.g., banning b ... Full text Cite

Economic and environmental costs of regulatory uncertainty for coal-fired power plants.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · February 2009 Uncertainty about the extent and timing of CO2 emissions regulations for the electricity-generating sector exacerbates the difficulty of selecting investment strategies for retrofitting or alternatively replacing existent coal-fired power plants. This may ... Full text Cite

Better safe than sorry: Precautionary reasoning and implied dominance in risky decisions

Journal Article Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · January 1, 2009 In four studies, student and nonstudent participants evaluated the possible outcomes of binary decisions involving health, safety, and environmental risks (e.g., whether to issue a dam-failure evacuation order). Many participants indicated that false posit ... Full text Cite

Should a coal-fired power plant be replaced or retrofitted?

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · December 2007 In a cap-and-trade system, a power plant operator can choose to operate while paying for the necessary emissions allowances, retrofit emissions controls to the plant, or replace the unit with a new plant. Allowance prices are uncertain, as are the timing a ... Full text Cite

Should a coal-fired power plant be replaced or retrofitted?

Journal Article Environmental Science and Technology · 2007 Cite