Among the many issues that profoundly affect the world economy every day, energy is one of the most prominent. Countries such as the U.S. strive to reduce reliance on the import of fossil fuels, and to meet increasing electricity demand without harming the environment. Two of the most promising solutions for the energy issue are to rely on renewable energy, and to develop efficient electricity storage. Renewable energy—such as wind energy and solar energy—is free, abundant, and most

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... does not exacerbate the global warming problem. However, most renewable energy is inherently intermittent and variable, and thus can benefit greatly from coupling with electricity storage, such as grid-level industrial batteries. Grid storage can also help match the supply and demand of an entire electricity market. In addition, electricity storage such as car batteries can help reduce dependence on oil, as it can enable the development of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and Battery Electric Vehicles. This thesis focuses on understanding how to manage renewable energy and electricity storage properly together, and electricity storage alone. In Chapter 2, I study how to manage renewable energy, specifically wind energy. Managing wind energy is conceptually straightforward: generate and sell as much electricity as possible when prices are positive, and do nothing otherwise. However, this leads to curtailment when wind energy exceeds the transmission capacity, and possible revenue dilution when current prices are low but are expected to increase in the future. Electricity storage is being considered as a means to alleviate these problems, and also enables buying electricity from the market for later resale. But the presence of storage complicates the management of electricity generation from wind, and the value of storage for a wind-based generator is not entirely understood. I demonstrate that for such a combined generation and storage system the optimal policy does not have any apparent structure, and that using overly s [...]