Optimal home energy management including batteries and heterogenous uncertainties

Abstract

Energy storage will play a vital role in the decarbonization of the electricity sector, especially in domestic installations. In such kind of systems, home energy management applications are becoming essential. These kinds of tools enable active control of domestic appliances and storage systems to pursue a more efficient use of energy in household installations. However, the emergence of renewable generators and electric vehicles makes the operation of residential assets more difficult, as multiple uncertainties should be managed on a whole. These unknowns have a different character, in fact, some of them can be easily predicted while others are subject to a high level of randomness. This paper addresses this issue by developing a novel home energy management tool that accounts for the different levels of the randomness of the uncertainties involved in home operation. To this end, a novel Lexicographic-Interval formulation of the home energy management problem is presented, by which the uncertainties can be easily modelled using interval notation. Unlike conventional tools, the new proposal sorts the uncertainties according to their level of randomness. Then, the energy management mechanism performs the scheduling plan according to the predefined classification so that the more random parameters rule the impact of others, thus giving more importance to those uncertainties that are hardly predictable. A benchmark case study is performed to validate the new proposal and illustrate its capabilities. Different tariffs are compared, showing that the Time-of-Use mechanism is normally more expensive than Real-Time-Pricing tariffs, increasing the electricity bill by 12 % in some cases. However, the level of robustness achieved with Time-of-Use tariffs seems higher, allowing to assume an abruptly unexpected reduction of photovoltaic generation.