Section: New Results

Stochastic programming

In this work performed in the framework of the PhD thesis of Zhihao Cen, and published as an Inria report RR-7868 [29] , We consider a model of medium-term commodity contracts management. Randomness takes place only in the prices on which the commodities are exchanged, whilst state variable is multi-dimensional, and decision variable is integer. In our previous article, we proposed an algorithm based on the quantization of random process and a dual dynamic programming type approach to solve the continuous relaxation problem. In this paper, we study the multi-stage stochastic mixed integer linear program (SMILP) and show the difficulty when using dual programming type algorithm. We propose an approach based on the cutting plane method combined with the algorithm in our previous article, which gives an upper and a lower bound of the optimal value and a sub-optimal integer solution. Finally, a numerical test on a real problem in energy market is performed.

This report, coauthored with R. Apparigliato and S. Auchapt (Gdf Suez), and published as Inria report 8133 [31] , describes a gas portfolio management problem, which is solved with the SDDP (Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming) algorithm. We present some improvements of this algorithm and focus on methods of pruning Benders' cuts, that is to say, methods of picking out the most relevant cuts among those which have been computed. Our territory algorithm allows a quick selection and a great reduction of the number of cuts. Our second method only deletes cuts which do not contribute to the approximation of the value function, thanks to a test of usefulness. Numerical results are presented.