Information Management for Decentralized Energy Storages under Market Uncertainties

TL;DR

This paper models decentralized energy storages and examines how different information management policies affect their decision-making and profitability under market uncertainties, highlighting the benefits and risks of information sharing.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework analyzing the economic value of market information and evaluates various policies for coordinating decentralized energy storages.

Findings

Sharing private forecasts improves aggregate profitability.

Excessive market information can be detrimental.

Targeted information release can enhance storage coordination.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a model of decentralized energy storages, who serve as instruments to shift energy supply intertemporally. From storages' perspective, we investigate their optimal buying or selling decisions under market uncertainty. The goal of this paper is to understand the economic value of future market information, as energy storages mitigate market uncertainty by forward-looking strategies. At a system level, we evaluate different information management policies to coordinate storages' actions and improve their aggregate profitability: (1) providing a publicly available market forecasting channel; (2) encouraging decentralized storages to share their private forecasts with each other; (3) releasing additional market information to a targeted subset of storages exclusively. We highlight the perils of too much market information provision and advice on exclusiveness of market forecast channel.