Decision support for strategic energy planning: a robust optimization framework

Optimization models for long-term energy planning often feature many uncertain inputs, which can be handled using robust optimization. However, uncertainty is seldom accounted for in the energy planning practice, and robust optimization applications in this field normally consider only a few uncertain parameters. A reason for this gap between energy practice and stochastic modeling is that large-scale energy models often present features—such as multiplied uncertain parameters in the objective and many uncertainties in the constraints—which make it difficult to develop generalized and tractable robust formulations. In this paper, we address these limiting features to provide a complete robust optimization framework allowing the consideration of all uncertain parameters in energy models. We also introduce an original approach to make use of the obtained robust formulations for decision support and provide a case study of a national energy system for validation.