Challenge

Smart Home Microgrid Optimization with DIY Battery & Dynamic Pricing

Design and implement an intelligent Energy Management System (EMS) for a residential microgrid, integrating solar PV generation, a 'DIY' battery storage unit, and grid connectivity. The primary goal is to minimize household electricity costs and maximize energy self-sufficiency by optimally scheduling battery charge/discharge cycles and managing energy flows. The system must adapt to dynamic Time-of-Use (ToU) or real-time electricity pricing schemes and incorporate weather forecasts to predict solar generation. This challenge requires creating a control logic that can make informed decisions based on forecasted energy demands, solar production, and varying electricity prices. Participants will need to model realistic household load profiles, solar PV output, and battery characteristics. The solution should be robust enough to handle data uncertainties and ensure continuous power supply while prioritizing cost savings and maximizing the use of self-generated clean energy.

Frontier Science & ResearchHosted by Vera
Challenge brief

What you are building

The core problem, expected build, and operating context for this challenge.

Design and implement an intelligent Energy Management System (EMS) for a residential microgrid, integrating solar PV generation, a 'DIY' battery storage unit, and grid connectivity. The primary goal is to minimize household electricity costs and maximize energy self-sufficiency by optimally scheduling battery charge/discharge cycles and managing energy flows. The system must adapt to dynamic Time-of-Use (ToU) or real-time electricity pricing schemes and incorporate weather forecasts to predict solar generation. This challenge requires creating a control logic that can make informed decisions based on forecasted energy demands, solar production, and varying electricity prices. Participants will need to model realistic household load profiles, solar PV output, and battery characteristics. The solution should be robust enough to handle data uncertainties and ensure continuous power supply while prioritizing cost savings and maximizing the use of self-generated clean energy.

Datasets

Shared data for this challenge

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Learning goals

What you should walk away with

  • Build a synthetic household electricity load profile generator that simulates typical hourly consumption patterns with customizable variations and daily/seasonal trends.

  • Implement a basic solar PV generation model that estimates power output based on factors like time of day, simulated irradiance, and panel efficiency.

  • Simulate a dynamic electricity pricing structure, such as Time-of-Use (ToU) tariffs or a simplified real-time pricing mechanism with hourly or sub-hourly variations.

  • Develop a greedy heuristic or a simple linear programming (LP) optimization routine (e.g., using SciPy.optimize) to schedule the battery's charge and discharge cycles.

  • Integrate simulated weather forecast data (e.g., irradiance, temperature) to improve solar generation predictions and adjust load profiles if needed.

  • Calculate key performance indicators (KPIs) such as daily/weekly electricity costs, grid interaction (export/import), self-consumption rate, and battery State of Charge (SoC) over a simulated period.

  • Implement a mechanism to prioritize critical loads or maintain a minimum battery SoC for resilience against simulated grid outages (optional advanced feature).

How this agent runs

The evaluation module will assess the energy management system's ability to minimize electricity costs, maximize self-consumption, and ensure battery operational limits are respected over a simulated period (e.g., one...

Preview configuration

Challenge input

Python script containing the EMS logic and a configuration file (e.g., JSON) specifying simulation parameters (e.g., start_date, pricing schedule,...

Agent execution

The configured agent processes the input under the challenge policy.

Evaluated output

JSON object containing total electricity bill, self-consumption rate, and battery SoC statistics.

Checks for
  • Verify that the battery's State of Charge (SoC) never falls below its minimum (e.g., 20%) or exceeds its ma...
Proof of success
  • Total Electricity Bill (USD) target: Minimize
Runtime evidence
  • Python execution harness
View technical recipe

Configured tools

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Evaluation contract

  • The evaluation module defines the checks.

Recipe state

This is a preview. The configuration can change before the evaluation recipe is locked.

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Start from your terminal
$npx -y @versalist/cli start smart-home-microgrid-optimization-with-diy-battery-dynamic-pricing

[ok] Wrote CHALLENGE.md

[ok] Wrote .versalist.json

[ok] Wrote eval/examples.json

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