In the current competition framework governing the electricity sector, complex dependencies exist between electrical and market data, which complicates the decision-making procedure of energy actors. These must indeed operate within a complex, uncertain environment, and consequently need to rely on accurate multivariate, multi-step ahead probabilistic predictions. This paper aims to take advantage of recent breakthroughs in deep learning, while exploiting the structure of the problem to design prediction tools with tailored architectural alterations that improve their performance. The method can provide prediction intervals and densities, but is here extended with the objective to generate predictive scenarios. It is achieved by sampling the predicted multivariate distribution with a copula-based strategy so as to embody both temporal information and cross-variable dependencies. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is emphasized and compared with several other architectures in terms of both statistical performance and impact on the quality of decisions optimized within a dedicated stochastic optimization tool of an electricity retailer participating in short-term electricity markets.

Energy storage systems (ESS) may provide the required flexibility to cost-effectively integrate weather-dependent renewable generation, in particular by offering operating reserves. However, since the real-time deployment of these services is uncertain, ensuring their availability requires merchant ESS to fully reserve the associated energy capacity in their day-ahead schedule. To improve such conservative policies, we propose a data-driven probabilistic characterization of the real-time balancing stage to inform the day-ahead scheduling problem of an ESS owner. This distributional information is used to enforce a tailored probabilistic guarantee on the availability of the scheduled reserve capacity via chance constrained programming, which allows a profit-maximizing participation in energy, reserve and balancing markets. The merit order-based competition with rival resources in reserve capacity and balancing markets is captured via a bi-level model, which is reformulated as a computationally efficient mixed-integer linear problem. Results show that a merchant ESS owner may leverage the competition effect to avoid violations of its energy capacity limits, and that the proposed risk-aware method allows sourcing more reserve capacity, and thus more value, from storage, without jeopardizing the real-time reliability of the power system.

The single imbalance pricing is an emerging mechanism in European electricity markets where all positive and negative imbalances are settled at a unique price. This real-time scheme thereby stimulates market participants to deviate from their schedule to restore the power system balance. However, exploiting this market opportunity is very risky due to the extreme volatility of the real-time power system conditions. In order to address this issue, we implement a new tailored deep-learning model, named encoder-decoder, to generate improved probabilistic forecasts of the imbalance signal, by efficiently capturing its complex spatio-temporal dynamics. The predicted distributions are then used to quantify and optimize the risk associated with the real-time participation of market players, acting as price-makers, in the imbalance settlement. This leads to an integrated forecast-driven strategy, modeled as a robust bilevel optimization. Results show that our probabilistic forecaster achieves better performance than other state of the art tools, and that the subsequent risk-aware robust dispatch tool allows finding a tradeoff between conservative and risk-seeking policies, leading to improved economic benefits. Moreover, we show that the model is computationally efficient and can thus be incorporated in the very-short-term dispatch of market players with flexible resources.

Solar energy and bioenergy are two leading renewable forms of energy in the move toward a near-zero-emission electric power industry. Concentrated solar power units coupled with thermal storage and biomass power plant offer dispatchable electricity, raising their ever-growing role in future renewable-dominated networks. This paper proposes a day-ahead and intraday dispatch model for maximizing the profit of an Integrated Biomass-Concentrated Solar (IBCS) system considering the synergies arising from their coupled operation. To sensibly capture uncertainty and decision sequence of real-life electricity markets, a two-stage stochastic structure is proposed, while the solar-related uncertainty is involved using Information Gap Decision Theory (IGDT). The model is complemented with a novel multi-objective architecture based on the compound of IGDT and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR), which allows handling risk exposure to both stochastic and IGDT inputs. The Pareto strategies in the multi-objective model are extracted through an expanded form of the $\epsilon$ -constraint method, whereas a posteriori approach based upon the out-of-sample assessment is applied to derive the optimal dispatch pattern among the generated Pareto strategies. The simulation results demonstrate that: 1) the proposed integrated dispatch model achieves substantial profitability, and 2) the performance of the suggested CVaR-IGDT model is superior to conventional approaches.

This paper presents an original collaborative framework for power exchanges inside a low voltage community. The community seeks to minimize its total costs by scheduling on a daily basis the resources of its members. In this respect, their flexibility such as excess storage capacity, unused local generation or shiftable load are exploited. Total costs include not only the energy commodity, but also grid fees associated to the community operation, through the integration of power flow constraints. In order to share the community costs in a fair manner, two different cost distributions are proposed. The first one adopts a distribution key based on the Shapley value, while the other relies on a natural consensus defined by a Nash equilibrium. Outcomes show that both collaboration schemes lead to important savings for all individual members. In particular, it is observed that the Shapley-based solution gives more value to mobilized flexible resources, whereas the Nash equilibrium rewards the potential flexibility consent of end-users.