Exploiting heuristic techniques for efficient energy management system in smart grid

In this paper, a demand side management (DSM) scheme is used to make the energy utilization efficient. The DSM scheme encourages the consumer to change the energy utilization patterns which benefit the utility. In return, consumer gets some incentives from the utility. The objectives of the proposed DSM system include: electricity bill reduction, peak to average ratio (PAR) minimization, and maximization of consumer comfort. In the proposed system, the electrical devices are scheduled by using elephant herding optimization (EHO) and adaptive cuckoo search (ACS) algorithms. Moreover, a new algorithm named as hybrid elephant adaptive cuckoo (HEAC) is proposed which uses the features of both former algorithms. The HEAC shows better performance as compared to EHO and ACS which is evident from the simulation results. Different electricity tariffs are introduced by the utility to provide incentives to the consumers. Time of use (ToU) tariff is used to make the system effective and enables the consumers to act according to the environment. The coordination can play a very important role in cost reduction as well as in user comfort maximization. The coordination is incorporated among the electrical devices by using dynamic programming (DP). Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in terms of electricity utilization cost, PAR reduction, and consumer comfort maximization.