Does Explicit Prediction Matter in Energy Management Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning?

As a model-free optimization and decision-making method, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been widely applied to the filed of energy management in energy Internet. While, some DRL-based energy management schemes also incorporate the prediction module used by the traditional model-based methods, which seems to be unnecessary and even adverse. In this work, we present the standard DRL-based energy management scheme with and without prediction. Then, these two schemes are compared in the unified energy management framework. The simulation results demonstrate that the energy management scheme without prediction is superior over the scheme with prediction. This work intends to rectify the misuse of DRL methods in the field of energy management.