Advanced Scenario Creation Strategies for Stochastic Economic Dispatch with Renewables

Abstract: Real-time dispatch practices for operating the electric grid in an economic and reliable manner are evolving to accommodate higher levels of renewable energy generation. In particular, stochastic optimization is receiving increased attention as a technique for handling the inherent uncertainty in wind and solar generation. The typical two-stage stochastic optimization formulation relies on a sample average approximation with scenarios representing errors in forecasting renewable energy ramp events. Standard Monte Carlo sampling approaches can result in prohibitively high-dimensional systems for optimization, as well as a poor representation of extreme events that challenge grid reliability. We propose two alternative scenario creation strategies, importance sampling and Bayesian quadrature, that can reduce the estimator's variance. Their performance is assessed on a week's worth of 5 minute stochastic economic dispatch decisions for realistic wind and electrical system data. Both strategies yield more economic solutions and improved reliability compared to Monte Carlo sampling, with Bayesian quadrature being less computationally intensive than importance sampling and more economic when considering at least 20 scenarios.