A New Stepwise Power Tariff Model and Its Application for Residential Consumers in Regulated Electricity Markets

Stepwise power tariff (SPT), which has been put into practice, is a crucial way for energy saving and environment protecting. In this paper, a new optimal model of SPT based on residential demand response model is presented. The optimal decision is proposed to restrain high electricity consumption as well as safeguard benefits of both supply and demand sides. As a result, the objective is designed to minimize electricity consumption and constraints are taken into consideration thoroughly, including acceptable index of consumers, average price, sales profit of power providers and basic electricity demand, which serves as a foundation for smooth implement of SPT. To solve the constrained optimal problem, genetic algorithm (GA) is employed. The effectiveness of the model and algorithm is investigated and demonstrated based on real data of 300 residents by a numerical example. The study shows that the method can reduce power consumption obviously with little sacrifice of the benefits of consumers and power providers.