FlexShape Battery MPC Controller

FlexShape Battery MPC controller is a Web-based tool for optimizing physical systems using Model-Predictive-Control (MPC) techniques. It is currently tailored to the vanadium redox flow batteries manufactured by our collaborator Visblue.

The MPC Contoller is essentially a graphical shell around an MPC controller implementation for battery-type loads, built on top of JModelica, which is a popular cyber-physical system modeling environment. For a specific battery installation, this tool allows specifying: (1) a Python program for data retrieval and control signal pushing, (2) a Modelica (battery) simulation model for prediction making, and (3) an Optimica optimization model for defining specific (battery) optimization objectives and constraints.

After providing these items, the tool continuously (in near real-time) retrieves live measurements from the battery, generates optimal control signals, and pushes the control signals back to the (PLC of the) battery installation. If requested by the user, it can compute the operational flexibility of the battery in the form of a FlexOffer (see the AAU stack) with explicitly defined minimum and maximum energy bounds.