Evaluation of a multi-stage stochastic optimisation framework for energy management of residential PV-storage systems

In Australia, the penetration of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems with storage is expected to increase in the future because of rising electricity costs, decreasing capital costs and growing concerns about climate change. Residential energy users can seize the full financial benefits of these systems by using an automated energy management system (EMS) to schedule and coordinate their energy use. An important aspect of an effective EMS is to control the battery state of charge, taking into consideration of the intermittent nature of PV generation and variability of electrical demand over a decision horizon of several days. However, this is difficult because of the computational burden associated with the currently proposed solution techniques. Given these existing shortcomings, this paper evaluates a two-stage stochastic optimisation framework for energy management of residential PV-storage systems to identify the benefits of having a longer decision horizon. That is: a simplified longer-horizon solver that uses stochastic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and a more detail shorter horizon solver using dynamic programming. In doing so, this paper discusses the general benefits of residential PV-storage systems coupled with an EMS.