Demand-side approaches to manage electricity outages in developing countries

This paper describes significant cost saving opportunities for consumers in developing countries by the use of computational intelligence and demand-side-management techniques to mitigate the massive use of diesel back-up during grid outages. Application of load scheduling optimization is investigated during scheduled power outages for statistical distributions of loads and diesel pricing for residential consumer in India under conditions of both a flat-rate and Time-of-Day grid tariff structure. Two load shifting approaches are explored - a casual load shift out of blackout region and a combined TOD-Outage scheduler. The load types modeled include passive loads and schedulable. Maximum executable peak load at any time is constrained by an aggregate load limit. The maximum diesel savings for consumer due to load shifting can be approximately 40% for a flat-tariff grid to more than 70% for a TOD-tariff grid. Effect of rising diesel prices on the economic benefits of load-shifting is also examined.