Consumer Satisfaction-Oriented Residential Appliance Scheduling Algorithms

Through effective demand side management, residential energy consumers can enjoy both lower electricity bills and satisfactory electricity-consuming experiences. Lots of residential appliance scheduling algorithms have been proposed, and consumer satisfaction has attracted more and more attention. In this paper, the consumer satisfaction index is defined, and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is applied to describe the consumer sensitivity to the usage time of each appliance. The time and appliance models are constructed, by use of which the minimum electricity bill model is set up. Based on these models, the consumer satisfaction-oriented residential appliance scheduling algorithm is developed. A case study shows that the new algorithm can help consumers cut down the electricity bill and use the appliances at their favourite time slots. Compared with the consumer's original energy usage scheme, the optimized scheme reduces the electricity bill by 33.56%. At the same time, the Peak-to-Average Ratio can be lowered by 5.26%.