The Power of Scheduling: the Scheduling of Power

Abstract

Because of the ongoing energy transition, an increasing share of our energy needs is met by electrical energy. At the same time, more and more of this electricity is generated by renewable sources that strongly depend on the weather for their output. This is already causing issues on the Dutch electrical grid. Not only is it increasingly difficult to balance supply and demand, but facilitating the transport of the electrical energy is a growing challenge as well. In this work, we apply scheduling techniques to problems in this context. Primarily, we look at planning/shifting controllable demand to better align the demand with energy production, or to use the limited capacity of the grid more efficiently. We propose scheduling approaches to find good time plans for these situations. These approaches could be applied, for example, to coordinate demand in places where transport capacity is limited, or to better align peaks in supply and demand. We argue the benefits of using scheduling techniques to solve this type of problem. At its core, this work consists of two parts with two chapters each. The first part presents a general class of problems and introduces a framework that can be used to find good solutions. In the second part, two specific examples of electricity scheduling problems are considered: planning demand and supply in a microgrid and e-vehicle charging, and solution methods for these problems are developed.