Impact of Dynamic Pricing in Residential Load Scheduling and Energy Management

Power consumption schedule can shift the loads from peak hours and redistribute them across a day based on user time preferences. This can indirectly help the utility to improve the load curve. It also helps the residential user to reduce the total electric bill as well. In India, electric billing has fixed energy charges based on the unit the user consumes. Demand-side management can introduce dynamic pricing, so the cost of power consumption is reduced. It motivates the consumer to schedule their load. This paper proposes to minimize the cost of electrical energy by optimal scheduling of home appliances in residential homes using mixed-integer linear programming. It reduces the peak-to-average ratio resulting in a reduction of stress on utility. The paper also discusses the benefit of time of use pricing and real-time pricing over a flat tariff system in the Indian electricity market.