Toy example I: Scheduling a battery, from scratch

Let’s walk through an example from scratch! We’ll optimize a 12h-schedule for a battery that is half full.

Okay, let’s get started!

Note

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Note

If you haven’t run through Toy example: Introduction and setup yet, do that first. There, we added power prices for a 24h window.

Make a schedule

After going through the setup, we can finally create the schedule, which is the main benefit of FlexMeasures (smart real-time control).

We’ll ask FlexMeasures for a schedule for our (dis)charging sensor (ID 2). We also need to specify what to optimize against. Here we pass the Id of our market price sensor (ID 1). To keep it short, we’ll only ask for a 12-hour window starting at 7am. Finally, the scheduler should know what the state of charge of the battery is when the schedule starts (50%) and what its roundtrip efficiency is (90%).

$ flexmeasures add schedule for-storage --sensor 2 --consumption-price-sensor 1 \
    --start ${TOMORROW}T07:00+01:00 --duration PT12H \
    --soc-at-start 50% --roundtrip-efficiency 90%
New schedule is stored.

Great. Let’s see what we made:

$ flexmeasures show beliefs --sensor 2 --start ${TOMORROW}T07:00:00+01:00 --duration PT12H
Beliefs for Sensor 'discharging' (ID 2).
Data spans 12 hours and starts at 2022-03-04 07:00:00+01:00.
The time resolution (x-axis) is 15 minutes.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│               ▐▀▀▌                                     ▛▀▀│ 0.5MW
│   ▞▌                                                    │
│   ▌▌                                                 ▗▘  │
│   ▌▌                                                    │
│                                                       │
│                ▝▖                                      │
│                                                       │
│   ▝▖                                                   │
│▀▘───▀▀▀▀▖─────▌────▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▌─────▐▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▘───│ 0.0MW
│                                                        │
│                               ▗▘                        │
│                                                        │
│                           ▝▖                            │
│                              ▗▘                         │
│                                                        │
│         ▝▖                                              │
│          ▙▄▟                 ▐▄▄▌                           -0.5MW
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
           10           20           30          40
                        ██ discharging

Here, negative values denote output from the grid, so that’s when the battery gets charged.

We can also look at the charging schedule in the FlexMeasures UI (reachable via the asset page for the battery):

https://github.com/FlexMeasures/screenshots/raw/main/tut/toy-schedule/sensor-data-charging.png

Recall that we only asked for a 12 hour schedule here. We started our schedule after the high price peak (at 4am) and it also had to end before the second price peak fully realized (at 8pm). Our scheduler didn’t have many opportunities to optimize, but it found some. For instance, it does buy at the lowest price (at 2pm) and sells it off at the highest price within the given 12 hours (at 6pm).

The asset page for the battery shows both prices and the schedule.

https://github.com/FlexMeasures/screenshots/raw/main/tut/toy-schedule/asset-view-without-solar.png

Note

The flexmeasures add schedule for-storage command also accepts state-of-charge targets, so the schedule can be more sophisticated. And even more control over schedules is possible through the flex-model in our API. But that is not the point of this tutorial. See flexmeasures add schedule for-storage --help for available CLI options, Describing flexibility for all flex-model fields or check out the A flex-modeling tutorial for storage: Vehicle-to-grid for a tangible example of modelling storage constraints.

This tutorial showed the fastest way to a schedule. In Toy example II: Adding solar production and limited grid connection, we’ll go further into settings with more realistic ingredients: solar panels and a limited grid connection.