Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Electricity Markets

由于政府的刺激计划和可再生能源对环境的友好性，可再生能源越来越多地渗透到电网系统中。但与此同时，可再生能源（如风能和太阳能）的产出是间歇性的。因此，可再生能源渗透率的增加增加了电网系统的波动性，这反映在当前放松管制的电力市场中更显着的电价波动。幸好，插电式油电混合动力车的电池可作为缓冲，在可再生能源发电量高时储存电力，否则便会放电，以达致电力平衡，平抑电价。这为解决可再生能源发电的不确定性和减少化石燃料的使用提供了一个有希望的双赢过程，这可以进一步实现可持续的综合电力运输系统。该奖项支持基础研究，以有效地将插电式混合动力电动汽车整合到输电和配电层面的电网系统中，并展示这如何改善目前放松管制的电力市场实践。如果成功，该项目将有助于提高可再生能源的利用率，并以最低的成本减少电力和运输行业的温室气体排放。通过与Midcontinent Independent System Operator密切合作，该项目的研究结果可以更快地应用于行业。最后，被低估的博士学位。将招募并激励学生参与该项目。将插电式混合动力电动汽车整合到电网系统中在技术上具有挑战性。本研究旨在探讨先进的随机最佳化与赛局理论模型，以解决问题，并发展创新的解决方法来解决模型，以帮助系统运营商和市场参与者获得不同目标的最佳决策，例如系统运营商的社会福利最大化和市场参与者的总利润最大化。这项研究将为市场参与者提供创新的交易政策，并完善市场设计规则，以确保电力市场的公平性和成本效率，同时确保可再生能源的高利用率。此外，创新的解决方案的技术，包括凸和单调性分析的马尔可夫决策过程利用问题的结构，线性化和分解算法的随机优化问题的平衡约束，切割平面和分支和切割算法的多阶段随机整数规划，将导致在每个相应的领域的方法创新。

Renewable energy has been increasingly penetrating into the power grid system due to the stimulus plan from the government and its environment-friendly nature. But meanwhile the output of renewable energy (such as wind and solar) is intermittent. As a result, the increasing renewable energy penetration increases volatility for the power grid system, which is reflected as more significant electricity price fluctuations in the current deregulated electricity markets. Fortunately, the batteries of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can serve as buffers to accommodate this by storing electricity when the renewable energy generation is high and discharging otherwise, so as to achieve power balance and flatten the electricity prices. This provides a promising win-win process of tackling renewable energy generation uncertainty and reducing fossil fuel usage, which can further achieve a sustainable integrated power-transportation system. This award supports fundamental research to efficiently integrate the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles into the power grid system at transmission and distribution levels, and show how this improves current deregulated electricity market practice. If successful, this project will help increase utilization of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse emissions for both power and transportation industry at minimum cost. By closely collaborating with Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the findings of this project can be implemented to industry faster. Finally, the underrepresented Ph.D. students will be recruited and motivated to participate in this project. Integrating plug-in hybrid electric vehicles into the power grid system is technically challenging. This research is to explore advanced stochastic optimization and game theory models to formulate problems and develop innovative solution approaches to solve the models so as to help derive optimal decisions for system operators and market participants with different objectives, such as maximizing the social welfare for the system operators and maximizing the total profit for the market participants. This study will lead to innovative trading policies for the market participants and refined market design rules to ensure fairness and cost efficiency for the electricity markets, while ensuring high utilization of renewable energy. Furthermore, the innovative solution techniques explored, including convex and monotonicity analyses for Markov decision process utilizing the problem structure, linearization and decomposition algorithms for stochastic optimization problems with equilibrium constraints, and cutting planes and branch-and-cut algorithms for multistage stochastic integer programs, will lead to methodology innovations in each corresponding field.