Efficient Algorithms for Renewable Energy Allocation to Delay Tolerant Consumers

The authors investigate the problem of allocating energy from renewable sources to flexible consumers in electricity markets. They assume there is a renewable energy supplier that provides energy according to a time-varying (and possibly unpredictable) supply process. The plant must serve consumers within a specified delay window, and incurs a cost of drawing energy from other (possibly non-renewable) sources if its own supply is not sufficient to meet the deadlines. They formulate two stochastic optimization problems: The first seeks to minimize the time average cost of using the other sources (and hence strives for the most efficient utilization of the renewable source).