On Electricity Market Equilibria with Storage: Modeling, Uniqueness, and a Distributed ADMM

We consider spot-market trading of electricity including storage operators as additional agents besides producers and consumers. Storages allow for shifting produced electricity from one time period to a later one. Due to this, multiple market equilibria may occur even if classical uniqueness assumptions for the case without storages are satisfied. For models containing storage operators, … Read more

Machine learning approach to chance-constrained problems: An algorithm based on the stochastic gradient descent

We consider chance-constrained problems with discrete random distribution. We aim for problems with a large number of scenarios. We propose a novel method based on the stochastic gradient descent method which performs updates of the decision variable based only on looking at a few scenarios. We modify it to handle the non-separable objective. A complexity … Read more

User Manual for BBCPOP: A Sparse Doubly Nonnegative Relaxation of Polynomial Optimization Problems with Binary, Box and Complementarity Constraints

BBCPOP proposed in [4] is a MATLAB implementation of a hierarchy of sparse doubly nonnegative (DNN) relaxations of a class of polynomial optimization (minimization) problems (POPs) with binary, box and complementarity constraints. Given a POP in the class and a relaxation order (or a hierarchy level), BBCPOP constructs a simple conic optimization problem (COP), which … Read more

Relative-Continuity” for Non-Lipschitz Non-Smooth Convex Optimization using Stochastic (or Deterministic) Mirror Descent

The usual approach to developing and analyzing first-order methods for non-smooth (stochastic or deterministic) convex optimization assumes that the objective function is uniformly Lipschitz continuous with parameter $M_f$. However, in many settings the non-differentiable convex function $f(\cdot)$ is not uniformly Lipschitz continuous — for example (i) the classical support vector machine (SVM) problem, (ii) the … Read more

A Sigmoidal Approximation for Chance-constrained Nonlinear Programs

We propose a sigmoidal approximation (SigVaR) for the value-at-risk (VaR) and we use this approximation to tackle nonlinear programming problems (NLPs) with chance constraints. We prove that the approximation is conservative and that the level of conservatism can be made arbitrarily small for limiting parameter values. The SigVar approximation brings computational benefits over exact mixed-integer … Read more

Electric Power Infrastructure Planning: Mixed-Integer Programming Model and Nested Decomposition Algorithm

This paper addresses the long-term planning of electric power infrastructures considering high renewable penetration. To capture the intermittency of these sources, we propose a deterministic multi-scale Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation that simultaneously considers annual generation investment decisions and hourly operational decisions. We adopt judicious approximations and aggregations to improve its tractability. Moreover, to overcome … Read more

A simplicial decomposition framework for large scale convex quadratic programming

In this paper, we analyze in depth a simplicial decomposition like algorithmic framework for large scale convex quadratic programming. In particular, we first propose two tailored strategies for handling the master problem. Then, we describe a few techniques for speeding up the solution of the pricing problem. We report extensive numerical experiments on both real … Read more

Tackling Industrial-Scale Supply Chain Problems by Mixed-Integer Programming

SAP’s decision support systems for optimized supply network planning rely on mixed-integer programming as the core engine to compute optimal or near-optimal solutions. The modeling flexibility and the optimality guarantees provided by mixed-integer programming greatly aid the design of a robust and future-proof decision support system for a large and diverse customer base. In this … Read more

Relatively-Smooth Convex Optimization by First-Order Methods, and Applications

The usual approach to developing and analyzing first-order methods for smooth convex optimization assumes that the gradient of the objective function is uniformly smooth with some Lipschitz constant L. However, in many settings the differentiable convex function f(.) is not uniformly smooth — for example in D-optimal design where f(x):=-ln det(HXH^T), or even the univariate … Read more

A Subgradient Method for Free Material Design

A small improvement in the structure of the material could save the manufactory a lot of money. The free material design can be formulated as an optimization problem. However, due to its large scale, second-order methods cannot solve the free material design problem in reasonable size. We formulate the free material optimization (FMO) problem into … Read more