A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned: Applying Optimization Techniques to Power Management

Abstract

Shortage of electricity is a major problem in many developing countries. Unfortunately, for some of these countries the only solution to this problem is to shut down complete electricity supply to a few neighborhoods to make up for the gap between demand and supply. To this end, we have developed a self-optimization approach to reduce the gap between demand and supply through remotely controlling high powered electric devices such as air conditioners. In this approach we have used mathematical optimization techniques such as linear programming to intelligently manage the electricity distribution. Not only through this approach we have been able to provide service-level guarantees to the consumers but we have also shown that our approach is fast, scalable and has the ability to handle unscheduled spikes in the system.