Development of a Two-Stage ESS-Scheduling Model for Cost Minimization Using Machine Learning-Based Load Prediction Techniques

Effective use of energy storage systems (ESS) is important to reduce unnecessary power consumption. In this paper, a day-ahead two-stage ESS-scheduling model based on the use of a machine learning technique for load prediction has been proposed for minimizing the operating cost of the energy system. The proposed algorithm consists of two stages of ESS. In the first stage, ESS is used to minimize demand charges by reducing the peak load. Then, the remaining capacity is used to reduce energy charges through arbitrage trading, thereby minimizing the total operating cost. To achieve this purpose, accurate load prediction is required. Machine learning techniques are promising methods owing to the ability to improve forecasting performance. Among them, ensemble learning is a well-known machine learning method which helps to reduce variance and prevent overfitting of a model. To predict loads, we employed bootstrap aggregating (bagging) or random forest technique-based decision trees after Holt–Winters smoothing for trends. Our combined method can increase the prediction accuracy. In the simulation conducted, three combined prediction models were evaluated. The prediction task was performed using the R programming language. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was verified by using Python’s PuLP library.