Optimizing power generation in the presence of micro-grids

In this paper we consider energy management optimization problems in a future wherein an interaction with micro-grids has to be accounted for. We will model this interaction through a set of contracts between the generation companies owning centralized assets and the micro-grids. We will formulate a general stylized model that can, in principle, account for a variety of management questions such as unit-commitment. The resulting model, a bilevel stochastic mixed integer program will be numerically tackled through a novel preprocessing procedure. As a result the solution for the bilevel (or single leader multiple follower) problem will be neither “optimistic” nor “pessimistic”. We will numerically evaluate the difference of the resulting solution with the “optimistic” solution. We will also demonstrate the efficiency and potential of our methodology on a set of numerical instances.