Synthesised Constraint Models for Distributed Energy Management

Abstract

Resource allocation is a task frequently encountered in energy management systems such as the coordination of power generators in a virtual power plant (unit commitment). Standard solutions require fixed parametrised optimisation models that the participants have to stick to without leaving room for tailored behaviour or individual preferences. We present a modelling methodology that allows organisations to specify optimisation goals independently of concrete participants and participants to craft more detailed models and state individual preferences. While considerable efforts have been spent on devising efficient control algorithms and detailed physical models in power management systems, practical aspects of unifying several heterogeneous models for optimisation have been widely ignored - a gap we aim to close. As a by-product, we give a formulation of warm and cold start-up times for power plants that improves existing power plant models. The concepts are detailed with the load-distribution problem faced in virtual power plants and evaluated on several random instances where we observe that a significant number of soft constraints of individual actors can be satisfied if considered.