Decision-Focused Learning Enhanced by Automated Feature Engineering for Energy Storage Optimisation

Abstract

Decision-making under uncertainty in energy management is complicated by unknown parameters hindering optimal strategies, particularly in Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) operations. Predict-Then-Optimise (PTO) approaches treat forecasting and optimisation as separate processes, allowing prediction errors to cascade into suboptimal decisions as models minimise forecasting errors rather than optimising downstream tasks. The emerging Decision-Focused Learning (DFL) methods overcome this limitation by integrating prediction and optimisation; however, they are relatively new and have been tested primarily on synthetic datasets or small-scale problems, with limited evidence of their practical viability. Real-world BESS applications present additional challenges, including greater variability and data scarcity due to collection constraints and operational limitations. Because of these challenges, this work leverages Automated Feature Engineering (AFE) to extract richer representations and improve the nascent approach of DFL. We propose an AFE-DFL framework suitable for small datasets that forecasts electricity prices and demand while optimising BESS operations to minimise costs. We validate its effectiveness on a novel real-world UK property dataset. The evaluation compares DFL methods against PTO, with and without AFE. The results show that, on average, DFL yields lower operating costs than PTO and adding AFE further improves the performance of DFL methods by 22.9-56.5% compared to the same models without AFE. These findings provide empirical evidence for DFL's practical viability in real-world settings, indicating that domain-specific AFE enhances DFL and reduces reliance on domain expertise for BESS optimisation, yielding economic benefits with broader implications for energy management systems facing similar challenges.