Smart energy storage management via information systems design

Abstract

Enabled by smart meters and Internet of Things (IoTs) technologies, we are now able to harness information systems and automatize the management of energy storages. Motivated by applications such as renewables integration and electrification of transportation, the paradigm shift towards smart-cities naturally inspires information systems design for energy storages. The goal of this paper is to understand the economic value of future market information to increase the efficiency of the energy market. From storages’ perspective, we investigate energy storages’ optimal decentralized buying and selling decisions under market uncertainty. Different potential policy interventions are discussed: (1) providing a publicly available market forecasting channel; (2) encouraging decentralized storages to share their private forecasts with each other; (3) releasing additional market information to a targeted subset of storages exclusively. Through these system level discussions, we evaluate different information management policies to coordinate storages’ actions and improve their profitability. The key findings of this work include (1) a storage's payoff first increases then decreases in its private information precision. The over-precision in forecasts can lead to even lower payoffs; (2) communication among the storages could fail to achieve a coordinated effort to increase market efficiency; (3) it is optimal to release additional information to a subset of energy storages exclusively by targeted information release.