User-friendly demand side management for smart grid networks

Demand side management (DSM) is an important technique for demand response (DR) system in smart grid networks. The DSM techniques traditionally have focused on minimizing electricity bill or peak load. More recent work reveals that users wish to reduce their electricity bills without sacrificing user convenience. Hence, waiting time has been introduced to reflect the user comfort for the DSM. Residents usually preferred that finish their work as soon as possible than less waiting time. These techniques have not taken previous usage pattern consideration, thus have been limited for use in home appliances. In this paper, we propose a system architecture and an algorithm for DSM referred to as user-friendly DSM (UDSM) using ICT. The UDSM is based on time-varying price information considering the following three-fold factors: electricity bill, usage pattern, and rebound peak load. Our proposed algorithm is divided into two steps. In the first step, we formulate the objective function based on electricity bill and usage pattern, and we minimize the electricity bill and maximize the usage similarity. Then, as the second step, we apply a load balancing algorithm to avoid blackout and to minimize rebound peak load. Our algorithm is tested in a real data from Jeju Island´s smart grid test site, and experimental results validate the proposed DSM scheme shifts the operation to off-peak times and consequently leads to significant electricity bill saving and user satisfaction ratio.