This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models held in August 2007. The twelve full papers are organized into topical sections covering grid business modeling, market mechanisms for the grid, and economic grid service provisioning. The proceedings are rounded off by six project reports that give an overview of current and ongoing research in grid economics.

The Grid computing concept, which allows users to integrate administratively and g- graphically dispersed computing resources, has been gaining traction in a number of application areas during the past few years. By interconnecting many – heterogeneous, though usually virtualized – computing resources, virtual computer centers or superc- puters can be created, providing a seamless supply of computing resources. Grid comp- ing provides benefits not only for scientific computing (e.g., SETI@home, which interconnects one million computers across 226 countries with a total processing power of 711 TFLOPS) but also in a commercial environment. It is projected that computing Grids can lower the total IT costs of businesses by 30%. The report “Grid Computing: A Vertical Market Perspective 2005–2010” (by The Insight Research Corporation) estimates an increase of worldwide Grid spending from $714.9 million in 2005 to approximately $19.2 billion in 2010. One of the most prominent activities in academia is the EGEE project being funded with 30 MEuro by the European Commission. EGEE brings together researchers from over 27 countries with the common aim of developing a service Grid infrastructure, which is suited for scientific computing with very high demand for processing power.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models, GECON 2009, held in Delft, The Netherlands, August 2009. The 8 full papers included in this volume were carefully selected from 25 submissions. They aim at presenting current results and innovative research in the area of Grid economics. The papers are organized in topical sections on market models and mechanisms, business support tools and business-related resource allocation. The proceedings are rounded off by 6 papers on research-in-progress which were selected from many paper submissions. These papers provide an overview about ongoing research projects on Grid and Cloud economics, addressing economic-related research in Cloud computing and software services.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models held in August 2007. The twelve full papers are organized into topical sections covering grid business modeling, market mechanisms for the grid, and economic grid service provisioning. The proceedings are rounded off by six project reports that give an overview of current and ongoing research in grid economics.

​This book defines and charts the barriers and future of vehicle-to-grid technology: a technology that could dramatically reduce emissions, create revenue, and accelerate the adoption of battery electric cars. This technology connects the electric power grid and the transportation system in ways that will enable electric vehicles to store renewable energy and offer valuable services to the electricity grid and its markets. To understand the complex features of this emergent technology, the authors explore the current status and prospect of vehicle-to-grid, and detail the sociotechnical barriers that may impede its fruitful deployment. The book concludes with a policy roadmap to advise decision-makers on how to optimally implement vehicle-to-grid and capture its benefits to society while attempting to avoid the impediments discussed earlier in the book.

SMART GRID AND ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES Discover foundational topics in smart grid technology as well as an exploration of the current and future state of the industry As the relationship between fossil fuel use and climate change becomes ever clearer, the search is on for reliable, renewable and less harmful sources of energy. Sometimes called the “electronet” or the “energy Internet,” smart grids promise to integrate renewable energy, information, and communication technologies with the existing electrical grid and deliver electricity more efficiently and reliably. Smart Grid and Enabling Technologies delivers a complete vision of smart grid technology and applications, including foundational and fundamental technologies, the technology that enables smart grids, the current state of the industry, and future trends in smart energy. The book offers readers thorough discussions of modern smart grid technology, including advanced metering infrastructure, net zero energy buildings, and communication, data management, and networks in smart grids. The accomplished authors also discuss critical challenges and barriers facing the smart grid industry as well as trends likely to be of importance in its future development. Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of: A thorough introduction to smart grid architecture, including traditional grids, the fundamentals of electric power, definitions and classifications of smart grids, and the components of smart grid technology An exploration of the opportunities and challenges posed by renewable energy integration Practical discussions of power electronics in the smart grid, including power electronics converters for distributed generation, flexible alternating current transmission systems, and high voltage direct current transmission systems An analysis of distributed generation Perfect for scientists, researchers, engineers, graduate students, and senior undergraduate students studying and working with electrical power systems and communication systems. Smart Grid and Enabling Technologies will also earn a place in the libraries of economists, government planners and regulators, policy makers, and energy stakeholders working in the smart grid field.

Distributed computing paradigms for sharing resources such as Clouds, Grids, Peer-to-Peer systems, or voluntary computing are becoming increasingly popular. While there are some success stories such as PlanetLab, OneLab, BOINC, BitTorrent, and SETI@home, a widespread use of these technologies for business applications has not yet been achieved. In a business environment, mechanisms are needed to provide incentives to potential users for participating in such networks. These mechanisms may range from simple non-monetary access rights, monetary payments to specific policies for sharing. Although a few models for a framework have been discussed (in the general area of a "Grid Economy"), none of these models has yet been realised in practice. This book attempts to fill this gap by discussing the reasons for such limited take-up and exploring incentive mechanisms for resource sharing in distributed systems. The purpose of this book is to identify research challenges in successfully using and deploying resource sharing strategies in open-source and commercial distributed systems.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON 2011, held in Paphos, Cyprus, in December 2011. The 9 revised full papers presented together with 5 work in progress papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on market mechanisms and negotiation; cost models, charging, and trading platforms; resource allocation, scheduling, and admission control; and two work in progress sections: risk assessment and economics of cloud services; and cost-aware adoption of cloud services.

Grid computing systems utilize the heterogeneous networked resources, such as computation, information, database, storage, bandwidth, etc., through the Internet. The systems can operate in predefined and organized ways or form the collected resource systems through self-organizing and decentralized ways. Even with the various types of abundant resources in the Internet, the resources that can be organized and operated in the presence of multiple resource owners with the uncertainty of resource availability and quality are scarce.This volume contains refereed and invited papers presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models held on 16 May 2006 at the Singapore Management University, in conjunction with GridAsia 2006. It includes contributions by researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines that discuss the economy of the systems concerned, with focus on the operational and deployment issues of Grid Economy.

"This book provide relevant theoretical frameworks covering the latest empirical research findings in the area of grid computing, with a critical perspective bridging the gap between academia and the latest achievements of the computer industry"--Provided by publisher.