15,842 research outputs found
On the Economic Value and Price-Responsiveness of Ramp-Constrained Storage
The primary concerns of this paper are twofold: to understand the economic
value of storage in the presence of ramp constraints and exogenous electricity
prices, and to understand the implications of the associated optimal storage
management policy on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of storage
response to real-time prices. We present an analytic characterization of the
optimal policy, along with the associated finite-horizon time-averaged value of
storage. We also derive an analytical upperbound on the infinite-horizon
time-averaged value of storage. This bound is valid for any achievable
realization of prices when the support of the distribution is fixed, and
highlights the dependence of the value of storage on ramp constraints and
storage capacity. While the value of storage is a non-decreasing function of
price volatility, due to the finite ramp rate, the value of storage saturates
quickly as the capacity increases, regardless of volatility. To study the
implications of the optimal policy, we first present computational experiments
that suggest that optimal utilization of storage can, in expectation, induce a
considerable amount of price elasticity near the average price, but little or
no elasticity far from it. We then present a computational framework for
understanding the behavior of storage as a function of price and the amount of
stored energy, and for characterization of the buy/sell phase transition region
in the price-state plane. Finally, we study the impact of market-based
operation of storage on the required reserves, and show that the reserves may
need to be expanded to accommodate market-based storage
A survey on modeling of microgrids - from fundamental physics to phasors and voltage sources
Microgrids have been identified as key components of modern electrical
systems to facilitate the integration of renewable distributed generation
units. Their analysis and controller design requires the development of
advanced (typically model-based) techniques naturally posing an interesting
challenge to the control community. Although there are widely accepted reduced
order models to describe the dynamic behavior of microgrids, they are typically
presented without details about the reduction procedure---hampering the
understanding of the physical phenomena behind them. Preceded by an
introduction to basic notions and definitions in power systems, the present
survey reviews key characteristics and main components of a microgrid. We
introduce the reader to the basic functionality of DC/AC inverters, as well as
to standard operating modes and control schemes of inverter-interfaced power
sources in microgrid applications. Based on this exposition and starting from
fundamental physics, we present detailed dynamical models of the main microgrid
components. Furthermore, we clearly state the underlying assumptions which lead
to the standard reduced model with inverters represented by controllable
voltage sources, as well as static network and load representations, hence,
providing a complete modular model derivation of a three-phase inverter-based
microgrid
Online Modified Greedy Algorithm for Storage Control under Uncertainty
This paper studies the general problem of operating energy storage under
uncertainty. Two fundamental sources of uncertainty are considered, namely the
uncertainty in the unexpected fluctuation of the net demand process and the
uncertainty in the locational marginal prices. We propose a very simple
algorithm termed Online Modified Greedy (OMG) algorithm for this problem. A
stylized analysis for the algorithm is performed, which shows that comparing to
the optimal cost of the corresponding stochastic control problem, the
sub-optimality of OMG is bounded and approaches zero in various scenarios. This
suggests that, albeit simple, OMG is guaranteed to have good performance in
some cases; and in other cases, OMG together with the sub-optimality bound can
be used to provide a lower bound for the optimal cost. Such a lower bound can
be valuable in evaluating other heuristic algorithms. For the latter cases, a
semidefinite program is derived to minimize the sub-optimality bound of OMG.
Numerical experiments are conducted to verify our theoretical analysis and to
demonstrate the use of the algorithm.Comment: 14 page version of a paper submitted to IEEE trans on Power System
Computing an Optimal Control Policy for an Energy Storage
We introduce StoDynProg, a small library created to solve Optimal Control
problems arising in the management of Renewable Power Sources, in particular
when coupled with an Energy Storage System. The library implements generic
Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) numerical methods which can solve a large
class of Dynamic Optimization problems. We demonstrate the library capabilities
with a prototype problem: smoothing the power of an Ocean Wave Energy
Converter. First we use time series analysis to derive a stochastic Markovian
model of this system since it is required by Dynamic Programming. Then, we
briefly describe the "policy iteration" algorithm we have implemented and the
numerical tools being used. We show how the API design of the library is
generic enough to address Dynamic Optimization problems outside the field of
Energy Management. Finally, we solve the power smoothing problem and compare
the optimal control with a simpler heuristic control.Comment: Part of the Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Python in
Science (EuroSciPy 2013), Pierre de Buyl and Nelle Varoquaux editors, (2014
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