{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,27]],"date-time":"2025-12-27T05:17:59Z","timestamp":1766812679453,"version":"3.48.0"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,22]],"date-time":"2025-12-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1766361600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Research, Development, and Innovation Authority (RDIA), Saudi Arabia","award":["13010-Tabuk-2023-UT-R-3-1-SE"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["13010-Tabuk-2023-UT-R-3-1-SE"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Systems"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The increasing deployment of hybrid renewable energy systems has introduced significant challenges in optimal energy dispatch and load balancing due to the intrinsic stochasticity and temporal variability of renewable sources, along with the multi-dimensional optimization requirements of simultaneously achieving economic efficiency, grid stability, and environmental sustainability. This paper presents GreenMind, a scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning framework designed to address these challenges through a hierarchical multi-agent architecture coupled with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks for predictive energy management. The framework employs specialized agents responsible for generation dispatch, storage management, load balancing, and grid interaction, achieving an average decision accuracy of 94.7% through coordinated decision-making enabled by hierarchical communication mechanisms. The integrated LSTM-based forecasting module delivers high predictive accuracy, achieving a 2.7% Mean Absolute Percentage Error for one-hour-ahead forecasting of solar generation, wind power, and load demand, enabling proactive rather than reactive control. A multi-objective reward formulation effectively balances economic, technical, and environmental objectives, resulting in 18.3% operational cost reduction, 23.7% improvement in energy efficiency, and 31.2% enhancement in load balancing accuracy compared to state-of-the-art baseline methods. Extensive validation using synthetic datasets representing diverse hybrid renewable energy configurations over long operational horizons confirms the practical viability of the framework, with 19.6% average cost reduction, 97.7% system availability, and 28.6% carbon emission reduction. The scalability analysis demonstrates near-linear computational growth, with performance degradation remaining below 9% for systems ranging from residential microgrids to utility-scale installations with 2000 controllable units. Overall, the results demonstrate that GreenMind provides a scalable, robust, and practically deployable solution for predictive energy dispatch and load balancing in hybrid renewable energy systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/systems14010012","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,23]],"date-time":"2025-12-23T11:30:18Z","timestamp":1766489418000},"page":"12","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["GreenMind: A Scalable DRL Framework for Predictive Dispatch and Load Balancing in Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1394-7159","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ahmed","family":"Alwakeel","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Information Technology Department, Faculty of Computers and Information Technology, University of Tabuk, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Artificial Intelligence and Sensing Technologies (AIST) Research Center, University of Tabuk, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6897-3050","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohammed","family":"Alwakeel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Artificial Intelligence and Sensing Technologies (AIST) Research Center, University of Tabuk, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia"},{"name":"Computer Engineering Department, Faculty of Computers and Information Technology, University of Tabuk, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shuai, Q., Yin, Y., Huang, S., and Chen, C. 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