Center Faculty Member

Faculty Member Name: Dr. Steven A. Gabriel
Title: Associate Professor
Departments: Civil and Environmental Engineering; Applied Mathematics and Computational Science Program; Decision and Information Technologies, Smith School of Business (affiliate appointment)
College: A. James Clark School of Engineering
Personal Web Page: www.eng.umd.edu/~sgabriel
E-mail
Telephone Number: 301.405.3242

Statement of energy interests and expertise:
Dr. Gabriel’s research is multi-disciplinary and involves building and analyzing mathematical models that blend engineering principles and economic behavioral assumptions as well as developing algorithms to solve the associated problems.   Usually these models involve some sort of optimization problem and/or game theory and may include deterministic and/or stochastic elements.  Illustrative examples of his recent work in energy include the following:

• Development and analysis of game theory-based, market equilibrium models in electricity and natural gas to understand issues of market power, regulatory policy, energy supply chain bottlenecks, equilibrium allocation of scarce resources, and decision-making under uncertainty.

• Analysis of convergence issues in the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) with implications for energy policy.

• Development of algorithmic aspects of NEMS for carbon tax pricing useful for energy/environmental policy planning; NEMS is heavily used by the U.S. Congress as well as other public agencies and private sector companies in energy planning.

• Development of risk assessment models for electric power retailers using stochastic programming, Monte Carlo simulation, and stochastic dynamic programming relating to viability of independent third-party retailers in the energy market supply chain.

• Analysis of whether the State of Maryland should participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) [ongoing work].

• Development of algorithms to compute electricity market equilibria with bilinear constraints relating to minimum profit conditions for power generators as found in certain energy markets (e.g., Mainland Spain’s power market) with regulatory impacts on the electricity supply chain.

• Analysis of carbon stabilization programs for Canada and its potential effect on North American natural gas markets using market equilibrium models.