Risk-Neutral and Risk-Averse Transmission Switching for Load Shed Recovery

Maintaining an uninterrupted supply of electricity is a fundamental goal of power systems operators. However, due to critical outage events, customer demand or load is at times disconnected or shed temporarily. While deterministic optimization models have been devised to help operators expedite load shed recovery by harnessing the flexibility of the grid’s topology (i.e., transmission … Read more

Optimal time-and-level-of-use price setting for an energy retailer

This paper presents a novel price setting optimization problem for an energy retailer in the smart grid. In this framework the retailer buys energy from multiple generators via bilateral contracts, and sells it to a population of smart homes using Time-and-Level-of-Use prices (TLOU). TLOU is an energy price structure recently introduced in the literature, where … Read more

Customized transition towards smart homes: A fast framework for economic analyses

Smart homes allow the optimization of energy usage so that households can reduce electricity bills, or even make profits. By 2020, 20% of all households in Europe and 35% in North America will be expected to become smart homes. Although smart homes seem to be the future for homes, many customers have the perception that … Read more

Operations Planning Experiments for Power Systems with High Renewable Resources

Driven by ambitious renewable portfolio standards, variable energy resources (such as wind and solar) are expected to impose unprecedented levels of uncertainty to power system operations. The current practice of planning operations with deterministic optimization tools may be ill-suited for a future where uncertainty is abundant. To overcome the reliability challenges associated with the large-scale … Read more

Scheduling Post-disaster Repairs in Electricity Distribution Networks with Uncertain Repair Times

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, large wind and ice storms, typically require the repair of a large number of components in electricity distribution networks. Since power cannot be restored before the completion of repairs, optimally scheduling the available crews to minimize the cumulative duration of the customer interruptions reduces the harm done to the affected … Read more

Optimal Aggregated Peak Shaving Via Residential Demand Response: A Framework for Retailers

This paper proposes an optimization framework for retailers that are involved in demand response (DR) programs. In a first phase responsive users optimize their own household consumption, characterizing not only their smart home components but also their comfort preferences. Then, the retailer exploits in a second phase this preliminary non-coordinated solution to implement a peak … Read more

Quantifying the value of flexibility: demand response versus storage

Intermittent sources of energy represent a challenge for electrical networks, particularly regarding demand satisfaction at peak times. Energy management tools such as load shaving or storage systems can be used to mitigate abrupt variations in the network.The value of different mechanisms to move energy through time is determined by a multi-objective programming approach, that aims … Read more

Lagrangian relaxation based heuristics for a chance-constrained optimization model of a hybrid solar-battery storage system

Published in Journal of Global Optimization. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10898-021-01041-y We develop a stochastic optimization model for scheduling a hybrid solar-battery storage system. Solar power in excess of the promise can be used to charge the battery, while power short of the promise is met by discharging the battery. We ensure reliable operations by using a joint chance … Read more

A Framework for Peak Shaving Through the Coordination of Smart Homes

In demand–response programs, aggregators balance the needs of generation companies and end-users. This work proposes a two-phase framework that shaves the aggregated peak loads while maintaining the desired comfort level for users. In the first phase, the users determine their planned consumption. For the second phase, we develop a bilevel model with mixed-integer variables and … Read more

A scalable mixed-integer decomposition approach for optimal power system restoration

The optimal restoration problem lies at the foundation of the evaluation and improvement of resilience in power systems. In this paper we present a scalable decomposition algorithm, based on the integer L-shaped method, for solving this problem for realistic power systems. The algorithm works by partitioning the problem into a master problem and a slave … Read more