Mapping High-Performance Regions in Battery Scheduling across Data Uncertainty, Battery Design, and Planning Horizons

arXiv cs.LG / 4/20/2026

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Key Points

  • The study analyzes battery energy storage scheduling using multi-stage model predictive control, focusing on how data characteristics, forecast uncertainty, planning horizon, and battery c-rate jointly affect optimal operation.
  • By generating synthetic datasets, the authors build parameterized relationships that identify an “effective horizon” beyond which additional forecast information yields diminishing returns.
  • Incorporating the effective horizon can substantially reduce computational costs while preserving optimal performance, and the paper reports optimal horizon lengths across many battery and uncertainty/data scenarios.
  • The research quantifies revenue losses attributable to forecast uncertainty and finds that performance can degrade even for fast batteries when forecasts are inaccurate.
  • The proposed framework also provides a basis for future machine-learning methods to predict optimal horizons from dataset parametrization to enable continuous industrial optimization with less computation.

Abstract

This study presents a triadic analysis of energy storage operation under multi-stage model predictive control, investigating the interplay between data characteristics, forecast uncertainty, planning horizon, and battery c-rate. Synthetic datasets are generated to systematically explore variations in data profiles and uncertainty, enabling parametrization and the construction of relationships that map these characteristics to optimal horizon length. Results reveal the presence of an effective horizon, defined as the look-ahead length beyond which additional forecast information provides limited operational benefit. Accounting for this horizon can reduce computational costs while maintaining optimal performance. The study provides optimal horizon lengths across a broad range of combinations of battery types, uncertainty levels, and data profiles, offering practical guidance for industrial storage operation. It also quantifies revenue losses due to forecast uncertainty, showing that errors can impact performance even for fast batteries. Finally, the framework lays the groundwork for future machine learning approaches that map dataset parametrization to optimal horizons, supporting continuous optimization in industrial settings without heavy computation.