Minimizing the Electricity Bill of Cooperative Users under a Quasi-Dynamic Pricing Model

Dynamic energy pricing is a promising development that addresses the concern of finding an environmentally friendly solution to meeting energy needs of customers while minimizing their electrical energy bill. In this paper, we mathematically formulate the electrical energy bill minimization problem for cooperative networked consumers who have a single energy bill, such as those working in a commercial/industrial building. The idea is to schedule user requests for appliance use at different times during a fixed interval based on dynamic energy prices during that interval. Two different methods are presented to minimize the energy cost of such users under non-interruptible or interruptible jobs. The methods relay on a quasi-dynamic pricing function for unit of energy consumed, which comprises of a base price and a penalty term. The methods minimize the energy cost of the users while meeting all the scheduling constraints and heeding the pricing function. The proposed methods result in significant savings in the energy bill under different usage pricing, and scheduling constraints.