UC Berkeley

Climate change is one of the most urgent problems faced by humanity, and rising sea levels, extreme weather events and desertification pose a severe threat to human life as we know it. Greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities have caused long-term global warming, and are primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels to generate energy, e.g., for electricity, heat or transport. It is essential that we move to cleaner sources of energy across the board to prevent further greenhouse gas emissions, and this move is driven by three main trends.

First, the rise of distributed energy resources through rooftop solar, backup batteries and electric vehicles has led to the creation of a new class of consumers which have electricity production capability. These resources tend to be variable, and are owned and operated independently. Second, the move to variable clean energy production will lead to power system operators having an increased need for demand side flexibility in order to accommodate the supply-side variability. Flexible consumers can bid in their flexibility into markets for profit, or use it to reduce their emissions impact. Third, the increasing share of electric vehicles will led to an intersection of the transportation and power networks, where electric vehicles will be able to use their batteries as `mobile' storage in the power network.

This dissertation addresses some key challenges associated with each of these trends, and proposes solutions for them.