A greedy algorithm for the unforecasted energy dispatch problem with storage in smart grids

Paper in proceeding, 2013

Integration of renewable and distributed energy sources is today possible through the use of the Smart Grid but these technologies bring benefits as well as challenges, such as their intermittent nature that leads to utilization problems for the grid. On the other hand, upcoming storage technologies, such as electrical cars, hold the potential to store and utilize this intermittent supply at a later time but bring challenges of their own, for example efficient storage utilization and intermittent energy demand. In this work we propose a novel modeling of the problem of unforecasted energy dispatch with storage as a scheduling problem of tasks on machines and an associated greedy algorithm with a guaranteed performance, along with an efficient algorithm for the problem. Finally, we outline an extensive simulation study for a variety of scenarios based on data from a large network of customers.