Flexible load toolbox

Do you have flexibility in your (electricity) demand profile? Or are you an aggregator? You are likely interested in measuring the cost and risk from different energy market participation strategies, and you may want to assess the scalability and solution quality of different algorithms to schedule flexible loads optimally.

Are you a network or market operator? Then you may have similar questions, but at the system level where network capacity constraints can be critical. Measuring is not sufficient; you may need to understand the effect of parties using their flexibility under different circumstances (and in the future), and may want to compare the consequences of alternative market rules and agreements with aggregators/end users.

Do you work for a ministry and are you involved in discussions on the energy transition? A better understanding of the consequences of (not) changing the regulation is important.

Are you a researchers on electricity markets, networks, or scheduling algorithms? Then this toolbox may also be very useful for you!

We have developed an open-source Toolbox for benchmarking scheduling algorithms considering different energy market designs. The Toolbox has a modular design that will help users, system operators and market designers answer such questions. It already includes a number algorithms, but our objective is that users can customize them or develop new algorithms that are better suited for individual needs. Furthermore, we want that users exploit their business intelligence when using the Toolbox. Therefore, we are not only presenting the Toolbox but helping you to get started customizing it for your objectives. Please see a lecture video on benchmarking flexible electric load scheduling algorithms under market price uncertainty here (slides available).

Toolbox source code

The source code of the toolbox is open-source and available at this git repository.  If you use this toolbox, please cite the following paper:

Koos van der Linden, Natalia Romero and Mathijs M. de Weerdt (2021). Benchmarking Flexible Electric Loads Scheduling AlgorithmsEnergies 14(5), 1269.

Impression of the toolbox output

The toolbox runs an online simulation of an electricity market. The trading agent can update its decisions every time step. The image shows how an electric vehicle charging schedule is updated over time. This schedule includes decisions to provide (voluntary) up/down reserves.

Future proof flexible charging

The flexible load toolbox is part of the Future proof flexible charging project.

The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) funded the Toolbox and workshop as part of the Uncertainty Reduction in Smart Energy Systems program (URSES). The partnership with Jedlix made this work possible. 

Find out more about this project on the project page.