EURO 2024 Copenhagen
Abstract Submission

EURO-Online login

1230. Pumped hydro energy storage: structural results and solution algorithms

Invited abstract in session TA-22: Optimization of energy storage systems, stream Energy Management.

Tuesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: 81 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Emre Nadar
Bilkent University
2. Harun Avci
Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University
3. Ece Cigdem Karakoyun
Econometrics, Erasmus University Rotterdam
4. Ayse Selin Kocaman
Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University
5. Parinaz Toufani
INSEAD

Abstract

We study the energy generation and storage problem for a very general configuration of a pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) facility having two connected reservoirs fed by natural inflow. The operator decides in real-time how much water to pump or release in the PHES facility, thereby determining the amount of electricity to buy from or sell to the market. We model this problem as a Markov decision process under uncertainty in streamflow rate and electricity price. We prove the optimality of a state-dependent threshold policy under positive electricity prices: The state space can be partitioned into several disjoint domains, each associated with a different action type, such that it is optimal to bring the total amount of water in the PHES facility and the amount of water in the upper reservoir to a different pair of state-dependent target levels in each domain. Leveraging our structural results, we develop a policy-approximation algorithm as a heuristic solution method when the electricity price can be negative. This algorithm yields near-optimal solutions in our data-calibrated instances one order of magnitude faster than the standard dynamic programming algorithm. Modifying this algorithm by imposing partial-state-dependent target levels leads to up to 29 times faster solution times and reduces total cash flows by only 1.32% on average from optimal.

Keywords

Status: accepted

Back to the list of papers