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AbstractIn this paper, we consider a smart power infras- electric vehicles (PHEVs), which can potentially double the
tructure, where several subscribers share a common energy average household load, have further increased the need to
source. Each subscriber is equipped with an energy consumption develop new methods for demand side management (DSM).
controller (ECC) unit as part of its smart meter. Each smart meter
is connected to not only the power grid but also a communication There is a wide range of DSM techniques such as voluntary
infrastructure such as a local area network. This allows two-way load management programs [3][5] and direct load control [6].
communication among smart meters. Considering the importance However, smart pricing is known as one of the most common
of energy pricing as an essential tool to develop efficient demand tools that can encourage users to consume wisely and more
side management strategies, we propose a novel real-time pricing efficiently. Given the recent increases in the price of energy,
algorithm for the future smart grid. We focus on the interactions
between the smart meters and the energy provider through the users are more willing to improve the insulation conditions
the exchange of control messages which contain subscribers of their buildings or try to shift the energy consumption
energy consumption and the real-time price information. First, schedule of their high-load household appliances to off-peak
we analytically model the subscribers preferences and their hours. DSM has been considered since the early 1980s [7]
energy consumption patterns in form of carefully selected utility [11]. DSM can be used as a tool for load shaping, where the
functions based on concepts from microeconomics. Second, we
propose a distributed algorithm which automatically manages electricity demand is being re-distributed over a certain period
the interactions among the ECC units at the smart meters and of time (e.g., time-of-day, day-of-week). Broad categories of
the energy provider. The algorithm finds the optimal energy load shaping objectives include peak clipping, load shifting,
consumption levels for each subscriber to maximize the aggregate valley filling, strategic conservation, and flexible load shaping
utility of all subscribers in the system in a fair and efficient [7]. For example, peak clipping includes direct load control of
fashion. Finally, we show that the energy provider can encourage
some desirable consumption patterns among the subscribers by the utilities on customers appliances to reduce the peak load.
means of the proposed real-time pricing interactions. Simulation Several pricing schemes have already been proposed in the
results confirm that the proposed distributed algorithm can smart grid literature. In general, flat pricing, peak load pricing,
potentially benefit both subscribers and the energy provider. and adaptive pricing are among the most popular approaches
to pricing which have been practiced extensively [12][15].
I. I NTRODUCTION
Flat pricing refers to those methods where the utility company
Electricity is currently provided through an infrastructure announces a fixed price for all periods. In peak load pricing,
consisting of utility companies, power plants, and transmission the intended cycle is divided into several periods and a distinct
lines which serve millions of customers. For example, the price value for each period is announced at the beginning of
electric power grid in the United States includes more than the operation [14]. On the other hand, in adaptive pricing,
3,100 electric utilities operating more than 10,000 power instead of announcing a pre-determined price for each period
plants, and there are about 157,000 miles of high voltage of operation at the beginning of the day, the exact price value
electric transmission lines which bring energy to more than for each period is calculated in real-time and is announced
131 million customers [1]. The dependency of almost all parts only at the beginning of each operation period. Clearly, in
of industry and different aspects of our life on electrical energy this method, the realization of random events and the reaction
makes this massive infrastructure a strategic entity. of users with respect to the previous prices will influence the
Given the increased expectations of customers, both in price in the upcoming operation periods [12].
quality and quantity [1], the limited energy resources, and the Based on a report of the U.S. Department of Energy
lengthy and expensive process of exploiting new resources, the [16], smart grid is an electricity delivery system enhanced
reliability of the grid has been put in danger and there is a with communication facilities and information technologies
need to develop new methods to increase the grid efficiency. to enable more efficient and reliable grid operation with an
Currently, the electricity consumption is not efficient in most improved customer service and a cleaner environment. By
buildings (e.g., due to poor thermal isolation). This results in exploiting the two-way communication capabilities of smart
the waste of a large amount of natural resources, since most of meters it becomes possible to replace the current power system
the electricity consumption occurs in buildings [2]. In addition, with a more intelligent infrastructure [17]. From this and given
the arising of new types of demand such as plug-in hybrid the importance of demand side management, in this paper,
we focus on the real-time interactions among subscribers and and the consumed power xki has to satisfy mki xki Mik .
the energy provider and introduce a novel real-time pricing Here, mki and Mik denote the minimum and the maximum
algorithm for the future smart grid. The contributions of this power consumption of user i, respectively. The minimum
paper can be summarized as follows: power consumption level may represent the load from ap-
We propose a real-time pricing algorithm for DSM pro- pliances such as refrigerator which always need to be on
grams to encourage desired energy consumption behav- during the day. The maximum power consumption level may
iors among users and to keep the total consumption level also represent the total power consumption level of household
below the power generation capacity. appliances assuming that all appliances are on.
In our system model, the subscribers and the energy The regulatory authority ensures that the energy provider
provider automatically interact with each other through a will provide the minimum capacity to cover the minimum
limited number of message exchanges and by running a power requirements of all users Lmin
k in each time slot.
distributed algorithm to find the optimal energy consump- Lk
min
mi , k K.
k
(2)
tion level for each subscriber, the optimal price values to iN
be advertised by the energy provider, and also the optimal
The generation capacity in each time slot k K is denoted by
generating capacity for the energy provider.
Lk , which may differ among time slots. We also define Lmax
k
We model the subscribers preferences and their energy
as the maximum generating capacity in each time slot k K.
consumption patterns in form of carefully selected utility
functions based on concepts from microeconomics. A. User Preference and Utility Function
We formulate the real-time pricing as an optimization Each individual subscriber in a power system is an en-
problem to maximize the aggregate utility of all sub- tity which can behave independently. The energy demand
scribers in the system while minimizing the imposed of each subscriber may vary based on different parameters.
energy cost to the energy provider. Moreover, we include For example, we can take into account the time of day,
constraints to limit the total energy consumption level of climate conditions, and also the price of electricity. The energy
all users to the total electricity generation capacity of the demand also depends on the type of the users. For example,
system offered by the energy provider. household users may have different responses to the same
We prove the existence and the uniqueness of the optimal price than industrial users. The different response of different
solution for the formulated optimization problem. users to various price scenarios can be modeled analytically by
Simulation results confirm that both subscribers and the adopting the concept of utility function from microeconomics
energy provider will benefit from the proposed algorithm. [18]. In fact, we can model the behavior of different users
This paper is organized as follows. The system model is through their different choices of utility functions [4]. For
presented in Section II. In Section III, we formulate our design all users, we represent the corresponding utility function as
as a convex optimization problem and propose a distributed U (x, ), where x is the power consumption level of the user
pricing algorithm. Simulation results are given in Section IV, and is a parameter which may vary among users and also
and conclusions are drawn in Section V. at different times of the day. More formally, for each user, the
utility function represents the level of satisfaction obtained by
II. S YSTEM M ODEL the user as a function of its power consumption. We assume
Consider a smart power system consisting of a single energy that the utility functions fulfill the following properties:
provider, several load subscribers or users, and a regulatory 1) Property I: Utility functions are non-decreasing. That
authority. For each user, we assume that there is an energy is, users are always interested to consume more power if
consumption controller (ECC) unit which is embedded in the possible until they reach their maximum consumption level.
users smart meter. The role of the ECC is to control the users Mathematically, this implies that we have
power consumption, and to coordinate each user with other U (x, )
0. (3)
users and also with the energy provider. All ECC units are x
connected to each other and to the energy provider through a For notational convenience we define
communication infrastructure such as a local area network. U (x, )
The intended time cycle for the operation of the users is V (x, ) , (4)
x
divided into K time slots, where K |K|, and K is the set as the marginal benefit [3], [4].
of all time slots. This division can be based on the behavior 2) Property II: The marginal benefit of customers is a non-
of the users and their power demand pattern: peak load time increasing function and we have
slots, valley load time slots, and normal load time slots. Also,
V (x, )
let N denote the set of all users, where N |N |. For each 0. (5)
user i N , let xki denote the amount of power consumed by x
user i in time slot k. For each subscriber i N and each time In other words, the utility functions are concave and the level
slot k K, we define the power consumption interval Iik as of satisfaction for users can gradually get saturated. While the
class of utility functions that fulfill (3) and (5) is very large,
Iik [mki , Mik ] (1) it is convenient to have a linear marginal benefit [3], [4].
3) Property III: We have to be able to rank the customers 1.5
Utility Function ( = 1)
based on their utilities. In our formulation, we assume, for a Utility Function ( = 0.5)
fixed consumption level x, a larger implies a larger U (x, ), Utility Function ( = 0.3)
Marginal Benefit Function ( = 0.3)
which can be expressed as
> 0. (6)
V(x,)
U(x,)
x 2 x2 if 0 x ,
U (x, ) = (8) 0.2
if x
,
0.15
where is a pre-determined parameter. Sample utility func-
V(x,)
tions from this class are shown in Fig. 1.
A subscriber that consumes x kW electricity during a 0.1
( iN xi Lk ),
k for a given kt , respectively. Also, kt is the value of k in
(15) instance t T , and is the step size. The interaction between
= iN (U (xki , ik ) k xki ) the energy provider and the subscribers is depicted in Fig. 3.
+k Lk Ck (Lk ), The distributed algorithms of each subscriber and the energy
provider are summarized in Algorithms 1 and 2, respectively.
where k is the Lagrange multiplier and x = (xki , i N ) for Consider Algorithm 1. In Line 1, each subscriber starts with
a fixed k K. Due to the separability of the first term in the its initial condition, which is assumed to be random. Then, the
Lagrangian, we can write the objective function of the dual loop in Lines 2 to 6 describes the responses of each subscriber
optimization problem as [20]: to the newly announced price k . Within this loop, each
D(k ) = maximize L(x, Lk , k ) subscriber receives the new value of k in Line 3 and solves
xk k min L Lmax
i Ii , iN , Lk local problem (17) to get the optimal consumption xk i ( )
k k
k
(16)
corresponding to the new value of k in Line 4. In Line 5, the
= iN Bi ( )
k k
+ Sk ( ),
k
user communicates the new value of xk i ( ) to the energy
k
10: end
11: until end of intended period.
Average Welfare
50 3
2
40
1
30
0
20 1
10 2
3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 Subscribers
Time (Hour)
Fig. 6. Average welfare of each subscriber when our proposed real-time
Fig. 4. Total consumed power when the proposed pricing algorithm is used. pricing algorithm as well as a fixed pricing algorithm are used.
Realtime Pricing Algorithm [2] U.S. Department of Energy, The 2008 Buildings Energy Data Book.
70 Fixed Pricing Algorithm
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Mar. 2009.
60 [3] M. Fahrioglu, M. Fern, and F. Alvarado, Designing cost effective
demand management contracts using game theory, in Proc. of IEEE
50 Power Eng. Soc. 1999 Winter Meeting, New York, NY, Jan. 1999.
Aggregate Utility