Minimizing commercial building cost in Smart Grid: An optimal meeting scheduling approach

We develop a mathematical programming approach to schedule meetings in an organization over a fixed period of time, while minimizing the wasted energy and possibly achieving more balanced demand distribution. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear program subject to a set of realistic constraints including people's available time slots and energy consumption characteristics of the meeting rooms. Two objective functions are considered: minimizing the total energy used and minimizing the total energy cost. Our simulations illustrate that using the optimal schedule may result in significant savings, both economical and environmental.