Deep Learning Techniques for Power System Operation: Modeling and Implementation

The fast development of the deep learning (DL) techniques in the most recent years has drawn attention from both academia and industry. And there have been increasing applications of the DL techniques in many complex real-world situations, including computer vision, medical diagnosis, and natural language processing. The great power and flexibility of DL can be attributed to its hierarchical learning structure that automatically extract features from mass amounts of data. In addition, DL applies an end-to-end solving mechanism, and directly generates the output from the input, where the traditional machine learning methods usually break down the problem and combine the results. The end-to-end mechanism considerably improve the computational efficiency of the DL.The power system is one of the most complex artificial infrastructures, and many power system control and operation problems share the same features as the above mentioned real-world applications, such as time variability and uncertainty, partial observability, which impedes the performance of the conventional model-based methods. On the other hand, with the wide spread implementation of Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI), the SCADA, the Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS), and many other measuring system providing massive data from the field, the data-driven deep learning technique is becoming an intriguing alternative method to enable the future development and success of the smart grid. This dissertation aims to explore the potential of utilizing the deep-learning-based approaches to solve a broad range of power system modeling and operation problems. First, a comprehensive literature review is conducted to summarize the existing applications of deep learning techniques in power system area. Second, the prospective application of deep learning techniques in several scenarios in power systems, including contingency screening, cascading outage search, multi-microgrid energy management, residential HVAC system control, and electricity market bidding are discussed in detail in the following 2-6 chapters. The problem formulation, the specific deep learning approaches in use, and the simulation results are all presented, and also compared with the currently used model-based method as a verification of the advantage of deep learning. Finally, the conclusions are provided in the last chapter, as well as the directions for future researches. It’s hoped that this dissertation can work as a single spark of fire to enlighten more innovative ideas and original studies, widening and deepening the application of deep learning technique in the field of power system, and eventually bring some positive impacts to the real-world bulk grid resilient and economic control and operation

Demand response performance and uncertainty: A systematic literature review

The present review has been carried out, resorting to the PRISMA methodology, analyzing 218 published articles. A comprehensive analysis has been conducted regarding the consumer's role in the energy market. Moreover, the methods used to address demand response uncertainty and the strategies used to enhance performance and motivate participation have been reviewed. The authors find that participants will be willing to change their consumption pattern and behavior given that they have a complete awareness of the market environment, seeking the optimal decision. The authors also find that a contextual solution, giving the right signals according to the different behaviors and to the different types of participants in the DR event, can improve the performance of consumers' participation, providing a reliable response. DR is a mean of demand-side management, so both these concepts are addressed in the present paper. Finally, the pathways for future research are discussed.This article is a result of the project RETINA (NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000062), supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). We also acknowledge the work facilities and equipment provided by GECAD research center (UIDB/00760/2020) to the project team, and grants CEECIND/02887/2017 and SFRH/BD/144200/2019.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

New actor types in electricity market simulation models: Deliverable D4.4

Project TradeRES - New Markets Design & Models for 100% Renewable Power Systems: https://traderes.eu/about/ABSTRACT: The modelling of agents in the simulation models and tools is of primary importance if the quality and the validity of the simulation outcomes are at stake. This is the first version of the report that deals with the representation of electricity market actors’ in the agent based models (ABMs) used in TradeRES project. With the AMIRIS, the EMLab-Generation (EMLab), the MASCEM and the RESTrade models being in the centre of the analysis, the subject matter of this report has been the identification of the actors’ characteristics that are already covered by the initial (with respect to the project) version of the models and the presentation of the foreseen modelling enhancements. For serving these goals, agent attributes and representation methods, as found in the literature of agent-driven models, are considered initially. The detailed review of such aspects offers the necessary background and supports the formation of a context that facilitates the mapping of actors’ characteristics to agent modelling approaches. Emphasis is given in several approaches and technics found in the literature for the development of a broader environment, on which part of the later analysis is deployed. Although the ABMs that are used in the project constitute an important part of the literature, they have not been included in the review since they are the subject of another section.N/

Bi-level Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization for Pelagic Island Microgrid Group Energy Management Considering Uncertainty

To realize the safe, economical and low-carbon operation of the pelagic island microgrid group, this paper develops a bi-level energy management framework in a joint energy-reserve market where the microgrid group (MG) operator and renewable and storage aggregators (RSA) are independent stakeholders with their own interests. In the upper level, MG operator determines the optimal transaction prices with aggregators to minimize MG operation cost while ensuring all safety constraints are satisfied under uncertainty. In the lower level, aggregators utilize vessels for batteries swapping and transmission among islands in addition to energy arbitrage by participating in energy and reserve market to maximize their own revenue. An upper bound tightening iterative algorithm is proposed for the formulated problem with nonlinear terms and integer variables in the lower level to improve the efficiency and reduce the gap between upper bound and lower bound compared with existing reformulation and decomposition algorithm. Case studies validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and demonstrate its advantage of the proposed approach in terms of optimality and computation efficiency, compared with other methods.Comment: Accepted by CSEE Journal of Power and Energy System

Understanding Deregulated Retail Electricity Markets in the Future: A Perspective from Machine Learning and Optimization

On top of Smart Grid technologies and new market mechanism design, the further deregulation of retail electricity market at distribution level will play a important role in promoting energy system transformation in a socioeconomic way. In today’s retail electricity market, customers have very limited ”energy choice,” or freedom to choose different types of energy services. Although the installation of distributed energy resources (DERs) has become prevalent in many regions, most customers and prosumers who have local energy generation and possible surplus can still only choose to trade with utility companies.They either purchase energy from or sell energy surplus back to the utilities directly while suffering from some price gap. The key to providing more energy trading freedom and open innovation in the retail electricity market is to develop new consumer-centric business models and possibly a localized energy trading platform. This dissertation is exactly pursuing these ideas and proposing a holistic localized electricity retail market to push the next-generation retail electricity market infrastructure to be a level playing field, where all customers have an equal opportunity to actively participate directly. This dissertation also studied and discussed opportunities of many emerging technologies, such as reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning, for intelligent energy system operation. Some improvement suggestion of the modeling framework and methodology are included as well.Ph.D.College of Engineering & Computer ScienceUniversity of Michigan-Dearbornhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145686/1/Tao Chen Final Dissertation.pdfDescription of Tao Chen Final Dissertation.pdf : Dissertatio

Operation and Planning of Energy Hubs Under Uncertainty - a Review of Mathematical Optimization Approaches

Co-designing energy systems across multiple energy carriers is increasingly attracting attention of researchers and policy makers, since it is a prominent means of increasing the overall efficiency of the energy sector. Special attention is attributed to the so-called energy hubs, i.e., clusters of energy communities featuring electricity, gas, heat, hydrogen, and also water generation and consumption facilities. Managing an energy hub entails dealing with multiple sources of uncertainty, such as renewable generation, energy demands, wholesale market prices, etc. Such uncertainties call for sophisticated decision-making techniques, with mathematical optimization being the predominant family of decision-making methods proposed in the literature of recent years. In this paper, we summarize, review, and categorize research studies that have applied mathematical optimization approaches towards making operational and planning decisions for energy hubs. Relevant methods include robust optimization, information gap decision theory, stochastic programming, and chance-constrained optimization. The results of the review indicate the increasing adoption of robust and, more recently, hybrid methods to deal with the multi-dimensional uncertainties of energy hubs

Demand Response in Smart Grids

The Special Issue “Demand Response in Smart Grids” includes 11 papers on a variety of topics. The success of this Special Issue demonstrates the relevance of demand response programs and events in the operation of power and energy systems at both the distribution level and at the wide power system level. This reprint addresses the design, implementation, and operation of demand response programs, with focus on methods and techniques to achieve an optimized operation as well as on the electricity consumer

Applications of Probabilistic Forecasting in Smart Grids : A Review

This paper reviews the recent studies and works dealing with probabilistic forecasting models and their applications in smart grids. According to these studies, this paper tries to introduce a roadmap towards decision-making under uncertainty in a smart grid environment. In this way, it firstly discusses the common methods employed to predict the distribution of variables. Then, it reviews how the recent literature used these forecasting methods and for which uncertain parameters they wanted to obtain distributions. Unlike the existing reviews, this paper assesses several uncertain parameters for which probabilistic forecasting models have been developed. In the next stage, this paper provides an overview related to scenario generation of uncertain parameters using their distributions and how these scenarios are adopted for optimal decision-making. In this regard, this paper discusses three types of optimization problems aiming to capture uncertainties and reviews the related papers. Finally, we propose some future applications of probabilistic forecasting based on the flexibility challenges of power systems in the near future.© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Deep Reinforcement Learning for the Control of Energy Storage in Grid-Scale and Microgrid Applications

The European and worldwide directives and targets for renewable energy integration, motivated by the imminent need to decarbonize the electricity sector, are imposing severe changes to the conventional electrical power system. The inherent unpredictability of the instantaneous energy production from variable renewable energy sources (VRES) is expected to make the reliable and secure operation of the system, a challenging task. Flexibility, and in particular, energy storage is expected to assume a key role in the integration of large shares of VRES in the power system, and thus, in the transition towards a carbon-free electricity sector. One of the main storage mechanisms that can facilitate the integration of VRES is energy arbitrage, i.e. the transfer of electrical energy from a period of low demand to another period of high demand. In this thesis, we investigate and develop novel operating strategies for maximizing the value of energy arbitrage from storage units at different scales (i.e. grid-scale or distributed) and in different settings (i.e. interconnected or off-grid). The decision-making process of an operator optimizing the energy arbitrage value of storage is an inherently complex problem, mainly due to uncertainties induced by: i) the stochasticity of market prices and ii) the variability of renewable generation. In view of the great successes of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) in solving challenging tasks, the goal of this thesis is to investigate its potential in solving problems related to the control of storage in modern energy systems. Firstly, we address the energy arbitrage problem of a storage unit that participates in the European Continuous Intraday (CID) market. We develop an operational strategy in order to maximize its arbitrage value. A novel modeling framework for the strategic participation of energy storage in the European CID market is proposed, where exchanges occur through a process similar to the stock market. A detailed description of the market mechanism and the storage system management is provided. A set of necessary simplifications that constitutes the problem tractable are described. The resulting problem is solved using a state-of-the-art DRL algorithm. The outcome of the proposed method is compared with the state-of-the-art industrial practices and the resulting policy is found able to outperform this benchmark. Secondly, we address the energy arbitrage problem faced by an off-grid microgrid operator in the context of rural electrification. In particular, we propose a novel model-based reinforcement learning algorithm that is able to control the storage device in order to accommodate the different changes that might occur over the microgrid lifetime. The algorithm demonstrates generalisation properties, transfer capabilities and better robustness in case of fast-changing system dynamics. The proposed algorithm is compared against two benchmarks, namely a rule-based and a model predictive controller (MPC). The results show that the trained agent is able to outperform both benchmarks in the lifelong setting where the system dynamics are changing over time. In the context of an off grid-microgrid, the optimal size of the components (i.e. the capacity of photovoltaic (PV) panels, storage) depends heavily on the control policy applied. In this thesis, we propose a new methodology for jointly sizing a system and designing its control law that is based on reinforcement learning. The objective of the optimization problem is to jointly find a control policy and an environment over the joint hypothesis space of parameters such that the sum of the initial investment and the operational cost are minimized. The optimization problem is then addressed by generalizing the direct policy search algorithms to an algorithm we call Direct Environment Search with (projected stochastic) Gradient Ascent (DESGA). We illustrate the performance of DESGA on two benchmarks. First, we consider a parametrized space of Mass-Spring-Damper (MSD) environments and control policies. Then, we use our algorithm for optimizing the size of the components and the operation of a small-scale autonomous energy system, i.e. a solar off-grid microgrid, composed of photovoltaic panels, batteries. On both benchmarks, we show that DESGA results in a set of parameters for which the expected return is nearly equal to its theoretical upper-bound. Finally, we provide the general conclusions and remarks of this thesis and we propose a list of future research directions that emerge as an outcome of this work

Coordinated and optimized voltage management of distribution networks with multi-microgrids

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201