Multi-objective optimization for demand side management in a smart grid environment

Demand Side Management (DSM) is an essential tool for the future smart grid environment. This helps the utilities to reduce their system peak load demand, energy bill and improve the system load demand profile. DSM implementation under the smart grid environment gives not only an advantage to the utilities but also profit to the consumers who are part of this technique. DSM which involves consumers as the crucial participants is usually modelled as optimization problems. DSM technique with single objective optimization alone may not satisfy the other objectives if the participation level is more. To overcome the above problem, this paper proposes a day-ahead based load shifting multi objective DSM technique to minimize utility energy bill and load profile deviation simultaneously. In order to test the proposed method, a test system with three different smart grid areas was considered. For comparison of results, the two objectives were also minimized individually. From the results it is clear that the proposed multi objective DSM technique is able to satisfy both the objectives with the best compromise solution.