Distributed residential load control of binary behaving loads

In this paper, a distributed algorithm is described to schedule binary behaving loads, such as dishwashers, washing machines or tumble dryers in a near optimal way. We consider a smart grid equipped with a two-way communication system. Energy producers and end-users exchange information through the communication infrastructure in order to converge to near optimal power consumption schedules. The near optimal scheduling is obtained by a lagrangian relaxation of the utility maximization problem. Utility functions that are decomposable in time as well as utility functions that are not decomposable in time are considered.