Storage Scheduling with Stochastic Uncertainties: Feasibility and Cost of Imbalances

Abstract: Dispatchability of renewable energy sources and inflexible loads can be achieved using a volatility-compensating energy storage. However, as the future power outputs of the inflexible devices are uncertain, the computation of a dispatch schedule for such aggregated systems is non-trivial. In the present paper, we propose a novel scheduling method that enforces the feasibility of the dispatch schedule with a pre-determined probability based on a description of the operation of the system as a two-stage decision process. Thereby, a crucial point is the use of probabilistic forecasts, in terms of cumulative density function, of the inflexible energy consumption/production profile. Then, for the sake of comparison, we introduce a second scheduling method based on state-of-the-art scenario optimization, where, unlike the proposed method, the focus is on the minimization of the expected final cost. We draw upon simulations based on real consumption and production data to compare the methods and illustrate our findings.