Public defence in Systems and Operations Research, M.Sc. (Tech) Juha Mäntysaari

Title of the doctoral thesis: Optimization approaches for dynamic environmental and energy management problems

Doctoral student: Juha Mäntysaari
Opponent: Prof. Carlos Henggeler Antunes, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Custos: Prof. Kai Virtanen, Aalto University School of Science, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis

Thesis available for public display 10 days prior to the defence at: 
https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/doc_public/eonly/riiputus/

Multiobjective optimization boosts energy-smart decision making 

Have you ever had to make a decision in which you need to take into account several criteria? Such decision making situations in everyday life can be, for example, buying a new home or a car. In addition to the purchase cost, criteria such as driving comfort and safety can affect the car selection. Operations Research is a discipline that studies decision making, where multicriteria problems can be examined with multiobjective optimization. In practice, multiobjective problems often evolve over time, such as the heating of a house or the regulation of a lake-river system. In his dissertation, Juha Mäntysaari approaches these types of dynamic multiobjective optimization problems by developing suitable solution methods, such as price coordination and goal programming methods. The challenge of the owner of an electrically heated house is to find the best way to use heating when electricity price can vary strongly during the day. The goal is to identify the optimal daily heating profile in terms of heating costs and living comfort. In the lake-river regulation problem, the dynamics is created by the changing in-flow of water over time and the temporal variation in the value of the electricity produced. The multiobjective problem arises from the combined optimization of flood risks caused by the varying water levels and the value of the energy produced. In the dissertation, Juha Mäntysaari has studied the use of the house as a heat storage which allows to transfer the use of electricity for heating to cheaper hours by adjusting the desired indoor temperature, for example, during the night. This activity is a way to implement demand side management in electricity markets. Similar demand side management approaches can be implemented on a larger scale within consumer groups or in process industries. The dissertation also examines demand side management in process industry by using price coordination between production planning systems and energy management systems. The overall solution procedure is based on the exchange of energy price and consumption data signals between the systems. It is shown that this can lead to a better overall solution. The environmental management case considered in the dissertation is a multiobjective optimization model developed for the regulation of the Päijänne-Kymijoki lake-river system in Finland.

Contact details:

Doctoral theses in the School of Science: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/52