Parallel stochastic programming for energy storage management in smart grid with probabilistic renewable generation and load models

Renewable power generation combined with energy storage (ES) is expected to bring enormous economical and environmental benefits to the future smart grid. However, the ES management in smart grid is facing significant technical challenges due to the volatile nature of renewable energy sources and the buffering effect of ES units. The challenges are further complicated by the increasing size and complexity of the system, as well as the consideration of random usage patterns of electrical appliances by customers. To address these challenges, this study proposes a parallel decomposition method for large-scale stochastic programming in a distribution system with renewable energy sources and ES units. By leveraging nested decomposition, the problem can be converted into independent sub-problems with a series of time periods. In addition, the reformulated problem is fully parallel for speed up in execution. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated based on the IEEE 4-bus and 33-bus test distribution systems with real photovoltaic generation and electrical appliance usage data. The case study demonstrates that the proposed scheme can substantially reduce the system operation cost, with low computational complexity.