This brief focuses on stochastic energy optimization for distributed
energy resources in smart grids. Along with a review of drivers and
recent developments towards distributed energy resources, this brief
presents research challenges of integrating millions of distributed
energy resources into the grid. The brief then proposes a novel
three-level hierarchical architecture for effectively integrating
distributed energy resources into smart grids. Under the proposed
hierarchical architecture, distributed energy resource management
algorithms at the three levels (i.e., smart home, smart neighborhood,
and smart microgrid) are developed in this brief based on stochastic
optimization that can handle the involved uncertainties in the system.