Approximate Model Predictive Control for Microgrid Energy Management via Imitation Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Changrui, Shi, Shengling, Alan, Anil, Venayagamoorthy, Ganesh Kumar, De Schutter, Bart
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Changrui
Shi, Shengling
Alan, Anil
Venayagamoorthy, Ganesh Kumar
De Schutter, Bart
author_facet Liu, Changrui
Shi, Shengling
Alan, Anil
Venayagamoorthy, Ganesh Kumar
De Schutter, Bart
contents Efficient energy management is essential for reliable and sustainable microgrid operation amid increasing renewable integration. In this paper, an imitation learning-based framework to approximate mixed-integer Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) is proposed for microgrid energy management, considering fuel generators, renewable energy resources, a unified energy storage unit, and curtailable loads. Within the proposed framework, a neural network is trained to imitate expert EMPC control actions from offline trajectories, thereby enabling fast real-time decision making without solving online mixed-integer optimization problems, which often exhibit highly variable solution times across instances and do not scale well to large problem sizes; in particular, worst-case solve times can be excessively large and therefore unsuitable for real-time deployment. In contrast, the learned policy provides predictable and consistently low computation times. To enhance robustness and generalization, the learning process incorporates noise injection during training to mitigate distribution shift and explicitly accounts for forecast uncertainty in renewable generation and demand. Furthermore, a constraint-tightening approach combined with a projection layer is proposed to ensure recursive feasibility and constraint satisfaction of the learned controller. Simulation results demonstrate that the learned policy achieves economic performance comparable to EMPC, while reducing computation time by approximately one order of magnitude relative to the optimization-based EMPC.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_20040
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Approximate Model Predictive Control for Microgrid Energy Management via Imitation Learning
Liu, Changrui
Shi, Shengling
Alan, Anil
Venayagamoorthy, Ganesh Kumar
De Schutter, Bart
Systems and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Optimization and Control
Efficient energy management is essential for reliable and sustainable microgrid operation amid increasing renewable integration. In this paper, an imitation learning-based framework to approximate mixed-integer Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) is proposed for microgrid energy management, considering fuel generators, renewable energy resources, a unified energy storage unit, and curtailable loads. Within the proposed framework, a neural network is trained to imitate expert EMPC control actions from offline trajectories, thereby enabling fast real-time decision making without solving online mixed-integer optimization problems, which often exhibit highly variable solution times across instances and do not scale well to large problem sizes; in particular, worst-case solve times can be excessively large and therefore unsuitable for real-time deployment. In contrast, the learned policy provides predictable and consistently low computation times. To enhance robustness and generalization, the learning process incorporates noise injection during training to mitigate distribution shift and explicitly accounts for forecast uncertainty in renewable generation and demand. Furthermore, a constraint-tightening approach combined with a projection layer is proposed to ensure recursive feasibility and constraint satisfaction of the learned controller. Simulation results demonstrate that the learned policy achieves economic performance comparable to EMPC, while reducing computation time by approximately one order of magnitude relative to the optimization-based EMPC.
title Approximate Model Predictive Control for Microgrid Energy Management via Imitation Learning
topic Systems and Control
Artificial Intelligence
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20040