Residential Load Scheduling in Smart Grid: A Cost Efficiency Perspective

In smart grid, residential consumers adopt different load scheduling methods to manage their power consumptions with specific objectives. The conventional load scheduling methods aim to maximize the consumption payoff or minimize the consumption cost. In this paper, we introduce a novel concept of cost efficiency-based residential load scheduling framework to improve the economical efficiency of the residential electricity consumption. The cost efficiency is defined as the ratio of consumer’s total consumption benefit to its total electricity payment during a certain period. We develop a cost-efficient load scheduling algorithm for the demand-side’s day-ahead bidding process and real-time pricing mechanism by using a fractional programing approach. Results show that the proposed scheduling algorithm can effectively reflect and affect user’s consumption behavior and achieve the optimal cost-efficient energy consumption profile. For practical consideration, we also take into account the service fee and distributed energy resources (DERs) in our framework, and analyze their impacts on the cost efficiency. Simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm significantly improves consumer’s cost efficiency. It is shown that a higher service fee will decrease the cost efficiency, while the integration of DERs can effectively improve the cost efficiency.