Electrical grid peak reduction with efficient and flexible automated demand response scheduling

As part of the smart grid, demand response (DR) mechanisms can be used by energy providers to encourage consumers to modify their electricity consumption in response to time-varying prices or other incentives. If many homes use automated appliance schedulers to respond to DR signals, consumption peaks can result during times with the lowest electricity prices. The effectiveness of strategies designed to prevent this phenomenon depends on what kind of automated appliance schedulers are being used in homes. In this paper, we assume homes are using a highly flexible appliance scheduler and explore how well two different strategies of reducing these consumption peaks perform. Namely, we consider setting electricity prices to be constant during off-peak times and using prices that increase when the total consumption of the home increases. We discuss how these two peak reduction strategies interact with the scheduler and propose modifications to the scheduler to improve or accommodate the strategies. We then present numerical simulations to show that the daily peak to average ratio (PAR) of the energy consumption of a group of homes using the flexible, sub-optimal scheduler can be reduced significantly by both strategies.