An optimal scheduling of smart home appliances using heuristic techniques with real-time coordination

With the development of smart grids (SG), it has become possible to schedule the smart appliances effectively in smart homes. The energy consumption pattern of smart appliances modified by home energy management system (HEMS) deployed in smart home. In this paper, two metaheuristic hybrid optimization techniques presented to program the schedule of household appliances. The proposed schemes are hybrid of tabu search (TS) and bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA) named as hybrid bacterial foraging tabu search algorithm (HBT) and the hybrid of TS and bat algorithm (BA) named as hybrid bat tabu search algorithm (HBAT). The aim is to reduce expenses of the customer while maintaining user comfort in terms of waiting time based on varying price signal. This paper describes two types of scheduling: first appliance scheduling using metaheuristic optimization techniques and second appliance rescheduling using dynamic programming (DP). Metaheuristic optimization techniques move the appliance from high price peak to low price peak minimizing consumer energy bill and peak to average ratio (PAR). DP used to handle the real-time user interrupts to turn ON any appliance. Appliance rescheduling formulated as knapsack problem, which divides a problem into subproblems to achieve an optimal solution. A coordination concept among appliances has been proposed for real-time appliance rescheduling. The simulation results validated the effectiveness of proposed hybrid techniques.