Optimal Energy Trading Policy for Solar-Powered Microgrids: A Modeling Approach Based on Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Battery management is key to enact the widespread use of microgrid-connected electric vehicles. We thoroughly review the literature and tackle the role of battery in the process of energy commercialization between the microgrids and utilities. In particular, by considering the battery management as a stochastic inventory control problem, we develop a dynamic programming model and we obtain an optimal policy for it. Then, we further explore the baseline model by investigating a scenario in which the microgrid is constrained by a budget defined a priori. Such a budget constraint captures situations when the microgrid profile is risk averse. We end by discussing the main issues that stem from such a budget constraint scenario.