Approximate policy iteration using neural networks for storage problems

Abstract

We consider the stochastic single node energy storage problem (SNES) and revisit Approximate Policy Iteration (API) to solve SNES. We show that the performance of API can be boosted by using neural networks as an approximation architecture at the policy evaluation stage. To achieve this, we use a model different to that in literature with aggregate variables reducing the dimensionality of the decision vector, which in turn makes it viable to use neural network predictions in the policy improvement stage. We show that performance improvement by neural networks is even more significant in the case when charging efficiency of storage systems is low.