Load Scheduling for Household Energy Consumption Optimization

This paper concerns the problem of optimally scheduling a set of appliances at the end-user premises. In the context of electricity smart grids, the electric energy fee varies over time and the user may receive a reward from an energy aggregator if he/she modifies his/her consumption profile during certain time intervals. The problem is to schedule the operation of the appliances taking into account overall costs, climatic comfort level and timeliness. We devise a MILP model and a heuristic algorithm accounting for a typical household user. Several numerical simulation results are reported, showing that the problem can be efficiently solved in real-life instances.