Microgrid control for renewable energy sources based on deep reinforcement learning and numerical optimization approaches

Optimal scheduling of battery energy storage system plays crucial part in dis- tributed energy system. As a data driven method, deep reinforcement learning does not require system knowledge of dynamic system, present optimal solution for nonlinear optimization problem. In this research, financial cost of energy con- sumption reduced by scheduling battery energy using deep reinforcement learning method (RL). Reinforcement learning can adapt to equipment parameter changes and noise in the data, while mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) requires high accuracy in forecasting power generation and demand, accurate equipment parameters to achieve good performance, and high computational cost for large- scale industrial applications. Based on this, it can be assumed that deep RL based solution is capable of outperform classic deterministic optimization model MILP. This study compares four state-of-the-art RL algorithms for the battery power plant control problem: PPO, A2C, SAC, TD3. According to the simulation results, TD3 shows the best results, outperforming MILP by 5% in cost savings, and the time to solve the problem is reduced by about a factor of three.