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Stijn Ally, Timothy Verstraeten, Ann Nowe, Ann Nowé, Jan Helsen
 

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Abstract 

Hybrid wind-hydrogen plants have multiple revenue sources, subject to uncertainties and trade-offs. As a consequence, maximizing their overall profitability is a challenging optimization problem. Since electricity is typically traded in advance of its actual power generation, weather forecasts play a crucial role in the power trading strategy. Additionally, the trading and control strategies of other market players influence the imbalance of the public grid and, as a result, have an impact on the revenue that can be generated by grid balancing. To address this challenge, we propose a novel approach based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (RL), with two RL agents: one for day-ahead power trading, and a second for real-time power control of the wind farm and the electrolyzer. The RL system is trained using real-world data from a large offshore wind farm in the Belgian North Sea. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, with the RL agents collaboratively maximizing the total operational profit of the hybrid plant, achieving a significantly higher profitability compared to conventional methods.

Reference