Optimization Strategy for Energy Allocation through Cooperative Storage Management

Abstract

We propose a strategy to optimize energy utilization through battery management in a cooperative environment where households share access to a community-owned energy farm. The households are equipped with lossy rechargeable batteries, which exhibit a non-linear discharging behavior. To devise our strategy, we first design the battery discharging operation in each household, and then we optimize the energy allocation policy among participating users. Our proposed strategy seeks to minimize the collective energy expenditure, and accounts for time- and location-dependent electricity prices. Both the battery discharging operation and the energy allocation policy are designed by solving constrained optimization problems. Specifically, calculus of variations and optimal control theory are used to provide explicit solutions and determine closed-form performance estimates. Extensive simulations are presented to validate our analysis and evaluate the impact of different system parameters.