Energy Management Optimization for Retail Electricity Customers Under CUF-Based Contracts

In competitive retail electricity markets, qualified retail electricity customers are free to select their retailers and tariff schemes that best suit their energy requirements, in addition to sourcing from wholesale electricity markets, self-generation technologies and battery energy storage, and scheduling the energy usage. In this study, the day-ahead energy management strategies were optimized to minimize the energy cost for a retail customer with a capacity utilization factor (CUF)-based contract, implemented in MATLAB and Gurobi Optimizer. In a CUF-based contract, the retail electricity price varies inversely with the volume of energy procured from the retailer. Using the proposed models and method, significant savings on the energy cost were achieved through optimal scheduling of energy from the retailer and trading in the wholesale electricity market, and further savings were accumulated with the utilization of solar PV and battery energy storage, and with load reduction through demand-side management.