Stochastic Optimal Control of Prosumers in a District Heating System

TL;DR

This paper models and solves a stochastic optimal control problem for prosumers in a district heating system, aiming to minimize costs related to thermal energy production, storage, and sales under uncertainty.

Contribution

It formulates a novel stochastic control framework for prosumer decision-making in district heating, incorporating renewable energy and storage options.

Findings

Optimal control policies derived from dynamic programming.

Numerical results demonstrate cost savings and system efficiency.

Value function analysis provides insights into prosumer behavior.

Abstract

We consider a network of residential heating systems in which several prosumers satisfy their heating and hot water demand using solar thermal collectors and services of a central producer. Overproduction of heat can either be stored in a local thermal storage or sold to the network. Our focus is the minimization of the prosumers expected discounted total cost from purchasing and selling thermal energy and running the system. This decision making problem under uncertainty about the future production and consumption of thermal energy is formulated as a stochastic optimal control problem and solved with dynamic programming techniques. We present numerical results for the value function and the optimal control.