Comparison and Evaluation of Methods for a Predict+Optimize Problem in Renewable Energy

Algorithms that involve both forecasting and optimization are at the core of solutions to many difficult real-world problems, such as in supply chains (inventory optimization), traffic, and in the transition towards carbon-free energy generation in battery/load/production scheduling in sustainable energy systems. Typically, in these scenarios we want to solve an optimization problem that depends on unknown future values, which therefore need to be forecast. As both forecasting and optimization are difficult problems in their own right, relatively few research has been done in this area. This paper presents the findings of the ``IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge on Predict+Optimize for Renewable Energy Scheduling," held in 2021. We present a comparison and evaluation of the seven highest-ranked solutions in the competition, to provide researchers with a benchmark problem and to establish the state of the art for this benchmark, with the aim to foster and facilitate research in this area. The competition used data from the Monash Microgrid, as well as weather data and energy market data. It then focused on two main challenges: forecasting renewable energy production and demand, and obtaining an optimal schedule for the activities (lectures) and on-site batteries that lead to the lowest cost of energy. The most accurate forecasts were obtained by gradient-boosted tree and random forest models, and optimization was mostly performed using mixed integer linear and quadratic programming. The winning method predicted different scenarios and optimized over all scenarios jointly using a sample average approximation method.

Evolutionary scheduling of university activities based on consumption forecasts to minimise electricity costs

This paper presents a solution to a predict then optimise problem which goal is to reduce the electricity cost of a university campus. The proposed methodology combines a multi-dimensional time series forecast and a novel approach to large-scale optimization. Gradient-boosting method is applied to forecast both generation and consumption time-series of the Monash university campus for the month of November 2020. For the consumption forecasts we employ log transformation to model trend and stabilize variance. Additional seasonality and trend features are added to the model inputs when applicable. The forecasts obtained are used as the base load for the schedule optimisation of university activities and battery usage. The goal of the optimisation is to minimize the electricity cost consisting of the price of electricity and the peak electricity tariff both altered by the load from class activities and battery use as well as the penalty of not scheduling some optional activities. The schedule of the class activities is obtained through evolutionary optimisation using the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy and the genetic algorithm. This schedule is then improved through local search by testing possible times for each activity one-by-one. The battery schedule is formulated as a mixed-integer programming problem and solved by the Gurobi solver. This method obtains the second lowest cost when evaluated against 6 other methods presented at an IEEE competition that all used mixed-integer programming and the Gurobi solver to schedule both the activities and the battery use.