Dynamic pricing; different schemes, related research survey and evaluation

Dynamic pricing is one of the most important tools to achieve demand side management in smart grids. It dynamically adjusts the price of the electricity consumed by the end users according to various utilization timing conditions. Different dynamic pricing schemes can be submitted to different consumers, including industrial users and residential households. The selection then the implementation of the appropriate dynamic pricing scheme is required for proper enhancement of the consumers electrical load profile as required by demand side management systems. This paper highlights the dynamic pricing concept by surveying its different schemes and their related research work in a chronological order. The paper is ended by detailed subjective comparison between dynamic pricing schemes to evaluate their effectiveness in different smart grid applications. The main benefit of the resultant comparison is to be used as a benchmark specifying the suitable dynamic pricing scheme for both utility and consumers, while considering the present and the upcoming future opportunities for utility infra-structure and operation conditions.