Demand Side Management of Power for Time-of-Use Pricing Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

The main purpose of demand side management (DSM) is to reduce peak load demand, overall cost and carbon dioxide emissions to improve the sustainability of the grid. This paper proposes the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm combines the smart plug to control the appliances for the purpose of load shifting in the DSM system. The proposed PSO load shifting method calculates the power consumption by hours with the following procedure: shifting part of the power to the off-peak demand period, making the electrical load balanced, finding the lowest cost and optimal switching period of the appliance, and then output to the smart plug through Wi-Fi to control the appliances. The experimental results show that the proposed PSO load shifting method in the two-stage time-of-use (TOU), the average power cost decreases by 51% and 18%, and the peak-to-average ratio (PAR) declines by 7.4% and 36%, respectively in summer month and non-summer month. In addition, in the three-stage TOU, the average power cost reduces by 50% and 23%, and the PAR increases by 7.9% and declines by 35%, respectively in summer month and non-summer month.