Citation: Gronier, T.; Maréchal, W.;
Geissler C.; Gibout, S. Usage of
GAMS-Based Digital Twins and
Clustering to Improve Energetic
Systems Control. Energies 2023, 16,
123. https://doi.org/
10.3390/en16010123
Academic Editors: Alfeu J. Sguarezi
Filho, Jen-Hao Teng, Lakshmanan
Padmavathi and Kin-Cheong Sou
Received: 29 October 2022
Revised: 29 November 2022
Accepted: 17 December 2022
Published: 22 December 2022
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
energies
Article
Usage of GAMS-Based Digital Twins and Clustering to
Improve Energetic Systems Control
Timothé Gronier
1,2,3
, William Maréchal
1,
*, Christophe Geissler
1
and Stéphane Gibout
2,
*
1
Advestis, 75008 Paris, France
2
Universite de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, E2S UPPA, LaTEP, 64053 Pau,France
3
ADERA, 33608 Pessac, France
* Correspondence: wmarechal@advestis.com (W.M.); stephane.gibout@univ-pau.fr (S.G.)
Abstract: With the increasing constraints on energy and resource markets and the non-decreasing
trend in energy demand, the need for relevant clean energy generation and storage solutions is
growing and is gradually reaching the individual home. However, small-scale energy storage is still
an expensive investment in 2022 and the risk/reward ratio is not yet attractive enough for individual
homeowners. One solution is for homeowners not to store excess clean energy individually but to
produce hydrogen for mutual use. In this paper, a collective production of hydrogen for a daily filling
of a bus is considered. Following our previous work on the subject, the investigation consists of
finding an optimal buy/sell rule to the grid, and the use of the energy with an additional objective:
mobility. The dominant technique in the energy community is reinforcement learning, which however
is difficult to use when the learning data is limited, as in our study. We chose a less data-intensive
and yet technically well-documented approach. Our results show that rulebooks, different but more
interesting than the usual robust rule, exist and can be cost-effective. In some cases, they even show
that it is worth punctually missing the H
2
production requirement in exchange for higher economic
performance. However, they require fine-tuning as to not deteriorate the system performance.
Keywords: energy management system; digital twins; general additive models; green H
2
1. Introduction
With the increasing constraints on energy and resource markets and the non-decreasing
trend in energy demand, the need for relevant clean energy generation and storage solu-
tions is growing and is gradually reaching the individual home [1,2]. Unfortunately, the
intermittent nature of most renewable energy sources makes it difficult for the residential
consumer to self-consume it. Furthermore, small-scale energy storage is still an expensive
investment in 2022 and the risk/reward ratio is not yet attractive enough for individual
homeowners. The solution studied here dedicates excess energy to a collective use, which
in this case is the daily filling of a hydrogen bus. This usage fits into the European plan for
hydrogen development [3] and some hydrogen buses are already in service in Europe [4].
Following our previous work on this case study [5], the investigation consists of finding an
optimal buy/sell rule to the grid, and the use of the energy with an additional objective:
mobility. The dominant technique in the energy community is reinforcement learning,
which is however difficult to use when the learning data is limited, as in our study. We
therefore chose a less data-intensive and yet technically well-documented set of tools.
1.1. Context
The importance of Energy Management Systems (EMS) has increased over the years
and is moving down to individual systems, such as individuals or groups of dwellings, or
solar community. In a previous article [5] we studied the opportunity of integrating energy
storage technologies for such scales. In this article we will focus on the generation of H
2
in
Energies 2023, 16, 123. https://doi.org/10.3390/en16010123 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies