Autonomous appliance scheduling based on time of use probabilities and load clustering

The ultimate smart grid will operate autonomously by implementing intelligent decision-making schemes with as little consumer intervention as possible. Its success will be heavily reliant on accurate real-time information exchange between the grid and the consumers. Customers will be expected to submit energy demand schedules to actively monitor energy price signals and participate in energy bids and respond to energy management signals in real time. This kind of smart grid-user interaction will be overwhelming and can result in consumer apathy. There is therefore a need to develop intelligent systems that will execute all these tasks without the active involvement of the consumer. This paper proposes such an approach. Demand response scheme by smart scheduling of household electrical appliances is presented. The scheduler calculates individual device hourly probabilities that it uses to automatically generate optimal schedules. An optimal schedule is considered to be the one that meets the consumer´s deadlines while ensuring energy cost savings to the customer.