An IIT researcher wins an award for explaining his TFM in 3 minutes

Miguel Ángel Barruso Recuero, pre-doctoral researcher at IIT, Industrial Engineering alumni with a dual Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering and Master's Degree in the Electric Power Industry, has won the "TFM in 3 minutes Challenge" organised by the IEEE Power and Energy Society.

The competition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the largest association of its industry, required the speakers to explain their Master's Thesis in a video of no more than 3 minutes, focusing their presentation on the relevance and importance of their work, their contributions and the impact of their work on society.

The candidates for the final phase then had to explain, this time live and telematically, their TFM. Miguel Ángel Barruso was the winner with a paper titled "Diseño de mecanismo de casación alternativo para un ME regional en un contexto de subsidios nacionales".

Miguel Ángel describes the experience as "very enriching" and sums up his participation in the challenge: "Condensing months of research and effort into such a limited time was a considerable challenge, but also a unique opportunity to polish my communication skills and to identify the most significant aspects of my work".

The invasion of Ukraine brought with it a disproportionate increase in the price of gas in Europe. This had a very significant impact on electricity production costs, which were quickly passed on to user prices.

As a shock measure, the so-called "Iberian exception" was created to reduce the price of electricity. Broadly speaking, it consisted of subsidising the gas acquisition costs of generation plants in order to reduce the resulting generation cost and, therefore, its effect on the final price of the electricity market.

The paper analyses the impact that this measure had on the functioning of the market and, in particular, on cross-border electricity trade through the interconnection with France. The central part of the study consisted of designing an alternative mechanism to the Iberian derogation and exploring the impact that this could have had on the correct functioning of the market, the price in Spain and the import/export flow with France.