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Electricity Price Forecasting (EPF) IS A branch of forecasting at the interface of electrical engineering, statistics, computer science, and finance that focuses on predicting prices in wholesale electricity markets for a whole spectrum of horizons. These range from a few minutes (real-time/intraday auctions and continuous trading); through days (day-ahead [DA] auctions); to weeks, months, or even years (exchange and over-the-counter traded futures and forward contracts). DA markets are the workhorse of power trading, particularly in Europe, and a commonly used proxy for “the electricity price.” The vast majority—up to 90%—of the EPF literature has focused on predicting DA prices. These are typically determined around noon during 24 uniform-price auctions, one for each hour of the next day. This has direct implications for the way EPF models are built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seasonal thermal energy storage systems (STESSs) can shift the delivery of renewable energy sources and mitigate their uncertainty problems. However, to maximize the operational profit of STESSs and ensure their long-term profitability, control strategies that allow them to trade on wholesale electricity markets are required. While control strategies for STESSs have been proposed before, none of them addressed electricity market interaction and trading. In particular, due to the seasonal nature of STESSs, accounting for the long-term uncertainty in electricity prices has been very challenging. In this article, we develop the first control algorithms to control STESSs when interacting with different wholesale electricity markets. As different control solutions have different merits, we propose solutions based on model predictive control and solutions based on reinforcement learning. We show that this is critical since different markets require different control strategies: MPC strategies are better for day-ahead markets due to the flexibility of MPC, whereas reinforcement learning (RL) strategies are better for real-time markets because of fast computation times and better risk modeling. To study the proposed algorithms in a real-life setup, we consider a real STESS interacting with the day-ahead and imbalance markets in The Netherlands and Belgium. Based on the obtained results, we show that: 1) the developed controllers successfully maximize the profits of STESSs due to market trading and 2) the developed control strategies make STESSs important players in the energy transition: by optimally controlling STESSs and reacting to imbalances, STESSs help to reduce grid imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has seen several forecasting methods being applied for heat load forecasting of district heating networks. This paper presents two methods that gain significant improvements compared to the previous works. First, an automated way of handling non-linear dependencies in linear models is presented. In this context, the paper implements a new method for feature selection based on [1], resulting in computationally efficient models with higher accuracies. The three main models used here are linear, ridge, and lasso regression. In the second approach, a deep learning method is presented. Although computationally more intensive, the deep learning model provides higher accuracy than the linear models with automated feature selection. Finally, we compare and contrast the proposed methods with earlier work for day-ahead forecasting of heat load in two different district heating networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-of-the-art Model Predictive Control (MPC) applications for building heating adopt either a deterministic controller together with a nonlinear model or a linearized model with a stochastic MPC controller. However, deterministic MPC only considers one single realization of the disturbances and its performance strongly depends on the quality of the forecast of the disturbances, which can lead to low performance. In fact, inadequate building energy management can lead to high energy costs and CO 2 emissions. On the other hand, a linearized model can fail to capture some dynamics and behavior of the building under control. In this article, we combine a stochastic scenario-based MPC (SBMPC) controller together with a nonlinear Modelica model that is able to provide a richer building description and to capture the dynamics of the building more accurately than linear models. The adopted SBMPC controller considers multiple realizations of the external disturbances obtained through a statistically accurate model, so as to consider different possible disturbance evolutions and to robustify the control action. To this purpose, we present a scenario generation method for building temperature control that can be applied to several exogenous perturbartions, e.g. solar irradiance, outside temperature, and that satisfies several important stastistical properties, in contrast with simpler and less accurate methods adopted in the literature. We show the benefits of our proposed approach through several simulations in which we compare our method against the standard ones from the literature, for several combinations of a trade-off parameter between comfort and energy cost. We show how our SBMPC controller approach outperforms the standard controllers available in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the symptoms of stimulant withdrawal. Definition; Characteristics; Insight into triphasic model of cocaine withdrawal; Effect on sleep patterns; Neurobiology of stimulant withdrawal.

To assess the impact of implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy measures, urban building energy models are emerging. In these models, due to the lack of data, the natural variability of the existing building stock is often highly underestimated and uncertainty on the simulated energy use arises. Therefore, this work proposes a probabilistic building characterization method to model the variability of the existing residential building stock. The method estimates realistic distributions of five input variables: U-values of the floor, external walls, windows and roof as well as window-to-wall ratio, based on known data (location, geometry and construction year). First, quantile regression has been implemented to generate the uncorrelated distributions based on the Flemish energy performance certificates database. The accuracy of the marginal distributions is good, as the empirical coverage on the 50%, 80%, 90% and 98% prediction interval deviates 0.6% at most. However, it is needed to include the correlations between these variables. Hence, three main methods to build multivariate distributions from marginal distributions and to draw correlated samples are implemented and extensively compared. The Gaussian copula method is put forward as the preferred method. Considering the mean-maximum discrepancy (MMD), this method performs eight times better than the uncorrelated case (MMD of 0.0027 versus 0.0228). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• European regulatory change triggered substantial change in balancing market design. • Opportunities for strategic behavior are identified using ABM with learning agents. • Procurement of balancing energy in a standalone market increases market efficiency. • Marginal pricing further enhances the economic efficiency of the balancing market. Market-based procurement of balancing services in Europe is prone to strategic bidding due to the relatively small market size and a limited number of providers. In the European Union, balancing markets are undergoing substantial regulatory changes driven the efforts to harmonize the market design and better align it with the goals of the energy transition. It is proposed to decouple the balancing energy (real-time) market from the (forward) balancing capacity market and the price of balancing energy will be based on the marginal bid. In this paper, the potential effects of these changes on market participants' strategies are analyzed using an agent-based model. This model compares the effects of a standalone balancing energy market with different pricing rules on economic efficiency with agents that apply naïve, rule-based and reinforcement-learning strategies. The results indicate that the introduction of a standalone balancing energy market reduces the cost of balancing, even in a concentrated market with strategic bidders. Marginal pricing consistently leads to lower weighted average prices than pay-as-bid pricing, regardless of the level of competition. Nevertheless, in an oligopoly with actors bidding strategically, prices can deviate from the competitive benchmark by a factor of 4–5. This implies that the introduction of a standalone balancing energy market does not entirely solve the issue of strategic bidding, but helps dampen the prices, as compared to the balancing market prior to the design change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose a gradient boosting tree methodology to diagnose faults in LV grids. • The method is generalizable to other grid topologies. • It is the first method to consider high-impedance faults in LV grids. • An analysis of the hindering factors is presented. • Gradient boosting trees are shown to outperform other methods from the literature. In this paper, a gradient boosting tree model is proposed to detect, identify and localize single-phase-to-ground and three-phase faults in low voltage (LV) smart distribution grids. The proposed method is based on gradient boosting trees and considers branch-independent input features to be generalizable and applicable to different grid topologies. Particularly, as it is shown, the method can be estimated in a specific grid topology and be employed in a different one. To test the algorithm, the method is evaluated in a simulated real LV distribution grid of Portugal. In this case study, different fault resistances, fault locations and hours of the day are considered. In detail, the algorithm is evaluated at eighteen fault resistance values between 0.1 and 1000 Ω ; similarly, nine fault locations are considered within each one of the 32 sectors of the grid and the faults are simulated across different hours of a day. The developed algorithm showed promising results in both out-of-sample branch and fault resistance data especially for fault detection, demonstrating a maximum fault detection error of 0.72%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] In this paper, we propose a data-driven methodology to identify the optimal placement of sensors in a multi-zone building. The proposed methodology is based on statistical tests that study the (in) dependence of measurements from various available sensors. The tests advice on a set of most dissimilar sensors to be retained, as they would convey the maximum information. The method starts with an initial setup that can provide measurements of every building zone to carry out this study; any of these sensors can be removed eventually to decrease costs in normal operation. The method has the advantages of being purely data driven and computationally efficient, as against several methods proposed in the scientific literature, that operate under the premise that detailed building models are available, to evaluate the number/position of the required sensors. This property makes the method scale to different buildings, in an expert free manner. The methodology can help towards better characterization of a building for optimal control and monitoring applications. It is validated against a widely used method – Kalman filtering with Grey-box models, using two different case studies. In both cases, the proposed approach agrees with the results using grey box models, suggesting that the method is reliable, while being quick and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]