Modeling and scheduling home appliances using nature inspired algorithms for demand response purpose

Abstract

Demand response (DR) refers to programs used in endeavors to reduce overall power consumption, manage consumption peak hour shifting, and reduce demand on service providers or utilities using different methods. This paper proposes a home appliance scheduler suitable for DR applications. In the proposed method, a controller controls thermal and shiftable loads, where thermal loads are empirical models that consider different factors. They produce the load profile of the home in consideration of different input parameters, e.g., setpoints and user tolerance ranges, and various factors, e.g., the room's physical structure and the external environment. A scheduler uses the controller to implement load shifting using the whale optimization algorithm, particle swarm optimization, and gray wolf optimization (GWO) algorithms for three different occupancy and price schemes. Acceptable results were obtained by applying the models using various outer temperatures and user tolerance ranges. The results also demonstrate cost reduction of 38.59% with GWO for the first occupancy scheme.