Optimal Scheduling of Domestic Appliances via MILP

This paper analyzes a consumption scheduling mechanism for domestic appliances within a home area network. The aim of the proposed scheduling is to minimize the total energy price paid by the consumer and to reduce power peaks in order to achieve a balanced daily load schedule. An exact and computationally efficient mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation of the problem is presented. This model is verified by several problem instances. Realistic scenarios based on the real price tariffs commercially available in the Czech Republic are calculated. The results obtained by solving the optimization problem are compared with a simulation of the ripple control service currently used by many domestic consumers in the Czech Republic.