Design of Hybrid Multi-Energy Systems under Uncertainty: An Adjustable Robust Optimization Approach

Derya Dinler

Multi-energy systems that jointly supply electricity and heat from solar panels, combined heat and power (CHP) units, boilers and storage are key to decarbonizing residential buildings. Their design requires choosing technology sizes today, while the hourly operation will face uncertain demands, solar output and energy prices for many years. In this talk, we present a two-stage adjustable robust optimization model in which first-stage decisions select technology sizes from commercial catalogs and second-stage decisions, including binary on/off commitments, adapt the hourly operation to the realized scenario. Uncertainty is described by a budgeted set with separate budgets for demands, prices and solar output. The resulting min–max–min problem with mixed-integer recourse is solved exactly by a nested column-and-constraint generation algorithm, which combines LP duality with a gradual enumeration of worst-case scenarios and on/off patterns.

In a case study of a residential complex with 100 households in Turin, Italy, experiments show that the uncertainty budgets and the fuel price drive the cost and the technology mix. The adjustable robust design remains feasible throughout the uncertainty set, where nominal and scenario-based designs often fail, at a lower realized cost than its static robust counterpart.

This work was carried out within the Tech4You (NextGenerationEU) and PRIN 2022 projects. It is joint work with Patrizia Beraldi (University of Calabria, Italy).

Short Bio

Derya Dinler is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at Hacettepe University since 2019. She received her B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering (2011), M.Sc. in Operations Research (2013) and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (2019) from METU, where she also worked as a research assistant between 2011 and 2019. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Calabria, Italy (April 2025 - January2026), collaborating on funded research projects on sustainable energy systems optimization.

Her main research interests are mathematical optimization and heuristics. The main application areas of her research are location problems, assembly line problems, data mining (mainly clustering) problems and energy systems.

Venue

Friday, October 16, 2026, 4.00 pm

IE Building, Halim Doğrusöz Auditorium (IE 03)