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The Demand Response (DR) is used by public electric utilities to encourage consumers to change their consumption profiles to improve the reliability and efficiency of the electric power system (EPS) and at the same time to minimize the electricity costs for the final consumers. Normally, DR optimization models only aim to reduce the energy consumption and reduce the final cost. However, this disregards the needs of the consumer. Therefore, proposals which appear excellent in theory are usually impracticable and non-commercial. This paper proposes a real-time Demand Response (DR) optimization model to minimize the electricity costs associated with consumption without compromising the satisfaction or comfort of residential consumers. The proposed DR here considered the different home appliance categories and level of consumer satisfaction for the new load scheduling of the appliances and is much more comprehensive than the other models analyzed. Moreover, it can be applied in any country, under any energy scenario. This model was developed as a nonlinear programming problem subject to a set of constraints. An energy consumption analysis of 10 families for 2015 from five geographic and climatic regions of Brazil was carried out. A computational validation of the model was performed using a genetic algorithm (GA) to determine the programming of residential devices for the time horizon. The computational simulations showed a decrease in the cost of the electricity. Moreover, the results showed that there was no impairment to consumer satisfaction and comfort due to the scheduling of appliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a random-key genetic algorithm (RKGA) for the nesting problem, a particular case of cutting and packing problems in which a collection of items (or polygons) has to be packed onto a rectangular object with the aim of minimising its length. In general, our approach prescribes the integration of the aforementioned metaheuristic and well-known placement rules (e.g. bottom-left). Furthermore, a shrinking algorithm – that operates within the RKGA – is also proposed to improve partial solutions. To assess the potentials of the proposed methodology, computational experiments performed on a set of difficult benchmark instances of the nesting problem are discussed here for evaluation purposes, showing that our algorithm is able to compete with previous successful studies in some particular problem instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demand Response (DR) aims to motivate end consumers to change their energy consumption patterns in response to changes in electricity prices or when the reliability of the electrical power system (EPS) is compromised. Most of the proposals found in the literature only aim at reducing the cost for end consumers. However, this article proposes a home energy management system (HEMS) that aims to schedule the use of each home appliance based on the price of electricity in real-time (RTP) and on the consumer satisfaction/comfort level in order to guarantee the stability and the safety of the EPS. Thus, this paper presents a multi-objective DR optimization model which was formulated as a multi-objective nonlinear programming problem subjected to a set of constraints and was solved using the Non-Dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II), in order to determine the scheduling of home appliances for the time horizon. The multi-objective DR optimization model not only to minimize the cost of electricity consumption but also to reduce the level of inconvenience for residential consumers. Moreover, a priori, it is expected to obtain a more uniform demand with fewer peaks in the system and, potentially, achieving a more reliable and safer EPS operation. Thus, the energy management controller (EMC) within the HEMS determines an optimized schedule for each home appliance through the multi-objective DR model presented in this article, and ensures a more economic scenario for end consumers. In this paper, a performance evaluation of HEMS in 15 Brazilian families between 1 January and 31 December 2016 is presented with different electric energy consumption patterns in the cities of Belém—PA, Teresina—PI, Cuiabá—MT, Florianópolis—SC and São Paulo—SP, with three families per city, located in the regions north, northeast, central west, south and the southeast of Brazil, respectively. In addition, a total of 425 home appliances were used in the simulations. The results show that the HEMS achieved reductions in the cost of electricity for all the Scenarios used while minimally affecting the satisfaction/comfort of the end consumers as well as taking into account all the restrictions. The largest reduction in the total cost of electricity occurred for the couple without children, resident in the city of Teresina—PI; with a drop from US$ 99.31 to US$ 90.72 totaling 8.65% savings in the electricity bill. Therefore, the results confirm that the proposed HEMS effectively improves the operating efficiency of home appliances and reduces electricity costs for end consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficient and safe management of air conditioner (AC), Piped Natural Gas (PNG) and water pipelines in large buildings is a major challenge for the safety of these buildings. In recent years, Linear Wireless Sensor Networks (LWSN) are being used extensively for monitoring of long natural gas, water, and oil pipelines. LWSNs can also be used for efficient and safe management of AC, PNG and water pipelines in large buildings. In this paper, a scheme for optimal placement of sensors and base stations in a linear fashion to monitor the various pipelines used in large buildings has been proposed. The proposed scheme utilizes the Lion Optimization Algorithm (LOA) and has been compared with three strategies, namely Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Greedy Approach with respect to throughput, lifetime and end-to-end delay. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme exhibits better performance in comparison to the other three considered techniques for all the three parameters. The most striking feature of the proposed approach is that optimization is more effective when the length of the pipeline is more as far as end-to-end delay is concerned. The lifetime of the network is significantly improved using the proposed approach, especially when the length of the pipeline is of medium size, which makes the proposed scheme suitable for energy efficient buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]