Deferrable load scheduling under imperfect data communication channel

In smart grid, the real-time pricing is implemented to motivate power consumers to change their consumption profile dynamically. With the real-time pricing, a deferrable load can be scheduled by its scheduler optimally so that the power consumption cost will be minimized. However, when the data communication in smart grid suffers from interference, congestion, malfunction in devices, or even cyber attack, it is possible that the power price information cannot be transmitted successfully to the scheduler. As a result, the scheduling performance will be negatively affected by the suboptimal decision-making because of incomplete power price information. To overcome this problem, a partially observable Markov decision process based deferrable load scheduling algorithm is proposed. Besides, the implementation of a standby alternative channel with the purpose to improve the reliability of the data communication in smart grid is also discussed in this paper. The numerical results show that the proposed partially observable Markov decision process based algorithm and the implementation of standby channel can effectively improve the scheduling performance when the scheduler lacks actual price information. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.