390 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 15, NO.
1, JANUARY 2019
Smoothing Net Load Demand Variations Using
Residential Demand Management
Fadi Elghitani and Ehab El-Saadany
Abstract—One of the major obstacles facing the large-
scale integration of renewable energy sources to existing
power networks is the large magnitude of fluctuations and
uncertainties introduced to aggregated demand profiles.
Such variations make the supply–demand matching a more
challenging task, and increase the operational cost of the
power system. In this paper, we provide an effective, yet
simple, methodology for smoothing power variations us-
ing the demand response of a large number of residential
appliances. We first present a demand aggregation model
based on queueing theory that can accommodate both de-
ferrable and thermostatically controlled loads. Second, con-
trollable demands are scheduled using an online algorithm
to smooth the net noncontrollable demand profile. The per-
formance of our methodology is evaluated using realistic
data.
Index Terms—Aggregation model, demand management,
Lyapunov optimization, renewable energy sources (RES),
residential appliances.
NOMENCLATURE
Q Set of queues.
i Virtual arrived energy to virtual queue i.
θs Temperature threshold for the TCL to send a demand
request.
θm ax Maximum required temperature level of a TCL appli-
ance.
θm in Minimum required temperature level of a TCL appli-
ance.
B Uncontrollable tradeoff parameter between general de-
lay and smoothing performances.
Cth Thermal capacitance.
N Number of demand classes (queues).
PTCL Power rating of a TCL appliance.
Rth Thermal resistance.
V Controllable tradeoff parameter between general delay
and smoothing performances.
Manuscript received January 29, 2018; revised May 29, 2018; ac-
cepted June 8, 2018. Date of publication July 2, 2018; date of current
version January 3, 2019. Paper no. TII-18-0242. (Corresponding author:
Fadi Elghitani.)
F. Elghitani is with the Network Planning Department, National
Telecommunication Institute, Cairo 11768, Egypt (e-mail: fadi.ghitani@
nti.sci.eg).
E. El-Saadany is with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON N2L 3G1, Canada, on
leave from the Petroleum Institute, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi 127788,
UAE (e-mail: ehab@uwaterloo.ca).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TII.2018.2852482
1551-3203 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
, Fellow, IEEE
wi Weighting parameter to prioritize queue i.
Qi (t) Queued energy in queue i at time slot t.
Zi (t) Virtual queued energy in virtual queue i at time slot t.
ai (t) Arrived energy to queue i at time slot t.
Piu Uncorrelated RES power for consumer i.
P0 Correlated RES power.
r(t) Aggregated net noncontrollable demand at time slot t.
θ Temperature controlled by a TCL appliance.
θe Ambient (external) temperature.
xi (t) Scheduled (satisfied) energy from queue i at time slot t.
I. INTRODUCTION
LTHOUGH utilizing renewable energy sources (RESs) is
A not a new idea, there are several challenges for integrating
them in existing power networks in terms of grid stability and
power system operations [1]–[3]. The latter’s challenges are
attributed to output power fluctuations from wind turbines or
photovoltaic cells. These fluctuations are characterized by being
stochastic, making the generation nondispatchable, which leads
to two major operational concerns. First, large fluctuations may
result in a supply–demand imbalance that can contribute to a
high ACE [4], [5]. The second concern is to provide adequate
reserves to accommodate the uncertainties in the net demand,
i.e., the remaining demand after reducing the portion satisfied
by the RESs. High uncertainties imply more reserves to be
purchased [6], [7], which can lead to a significant increase in
the cost of operations.
Many research studies were made to smooth power fluctua-
tions resulting from the RES integration. One approach, which
avoids the deployment of expensive storage systems [8], is to
modify electric energy demand in a way that helps in smoothing
power fluctuations. Contributing consumers will be compen-
sated using suitable financial incentives. In the literature, this
approach is referred to as demand response (DR), which covers
a wide range of applications, other than RES integration. The
majority of the existing solutions are based on resource manage-
ment (optimization) frameworks, in which demand modification
is the resource to be dispatched. Reducing power fluctuations
can appear explicitly in the objective function [9], [10], or im-
plicitly by assuming a convex cost function of the aggregated
power profile [11], [12]. Existing studies allocate different types
of demands at the beginning of the scheduling time horizon (of-
fline scheduling) based on the forecast of the RES output power.
However, the forecast might not be accurate, especially for long
time horizons. Also, offline scheduling is not suitable for man-
aging residential appliances, because it is hard to predict when
ELGHITANI AND EL-SAADANY: SMOOTHING NET LOAD DEMAND VARIATIONS USING RESIDENTIAL DEMAND MANAGEMENT
Fig. 1. System model under consideration. The residential appliances
are classified into three categories: deferrable, TCL, and noncontrollable.
Appliances are controlled by the EMC. The communication is established
with the GENCO/DISCO via the smart meter of each consumer.
a consumer will exactly need to turn an appliance ON. Finally,
demand allocation decisions are usually the solution of a mixed-
integer linear programming problem, which becomes computa-
tionally difficult as the number of appliances to be scheduled
increases.
In this paper, we propose a methodology for smoothing power
fluctuations resulting from RES integration, using the DR of a
large number of residential appliances. Our contributions are
threefold: First, we develop an aggregation model for the resi-
dential DR. The model exploits different DR potentials of dif-
ferent consumers and it is suitable for both deferrable and TCL
appliances. Second, based on the aforementioned model, we
develop a DR scheduling algorithm that aims to reduce the
fluctuations resulting from a large-scale integration of RESs.
The algorithm is computationally efficient and avoids solving
a large-scale optimization problem. Third, we evaluate the pro-
posed algorithm based on two criteria: long-term average perfor-
mance and short-term sample-path performance. Different from
the existing studies, our proposed methodology is based on an
online scheduling method for residential appliances, which is
suitable to be applied to any general RES signal. Also, our
methodology depends on an aggregation model for residential
appliances, which can accommodate a large number of appli-
ances.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We de-
scribe the system model in Section II. Our proposed method-
ology and problem formulation are presented in Section III.
Numerical results are given in Section IV to demonstrate the
performance of our proposed methodology. Finally, Section V
concludes this research.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
Consider a standalone microgrid as shown in Fig. 1. The mi-
crogrid is composed of a residential community that is served
by a generation company (GENCO). The generation capabil-
ity has a ramping time Ψ > 0, which is the time needed for
the generators to reach from minimum to maximum production
capability. Any supply–demand mismatch is covered by pur-
chasing expensive ancillary services (AS). To account for both
regulation-up (AS that are available to increase output power)
and regulation-down (AS that are available to decrease output
391
power), we assume that their cost is a quadratic function of the
mismatch. The AS can be directly purchased by the GENCO or
by the DISCO if the latter acts as a balancing responsible party.
The GENCO/DISCO is responsible for compensating the vari-
ations in net demand, which is the total uncontrollable demand
minus the RES generation. To achieve the aforementioned goal,
the GENCO/DISCO is allowed to directly control some of the
appliances of the residential consumers, who will be compen-
sated using suitable financial incentives. For simplicity (and in
consistency with existing studies in the area), we model our
system as a discrete time system, where information is gathered
and decisions are made in prespecified time slots. The duration
of each time slot is 1 min.
We follow an approach for residential demand modeling sim-
ilar to that in [13]. The general behavior of consumers can
be modeled as a Markov chain, whose states represent differ-
ent consumer’s activity level. Each activity level can influence
the probability that a consumer turns ON an appliance. Each
consumer has three types of appliances: deferrable appliances,
TCLs, and noncontrollable appliances. Both deferrable appli-
ances and TCLs are controllable, i.e., can contribute to DR.
An example of deferrable appliances is the washing machine,
whose energy consumption can be deferred freely, but before a
deadline dictated by the consumer’s settings. Thus, a deferrable
appliance is controlled only by defining how many time slots it
can be deferred before consuming energy. An example of TCL
appliances is the refrigerator that can be turned ON or OFF freely
as long as the refrigerator’s temperature is within a certain tem-
perature band (the deadband). The last type of appliances are
those that cannot be controlled (e.g., TV), and hence, they have
no contribution to DR.
In addition to appliances’ energy demand, each consumer has
a local RES generator, which satisfies a part of the consumer’s
demand. Since RES units are installed within a limited geo-
graphical area, the power profiles generated from all units are
highly correlated. We model the power generated from the RES
unit of consumer i as a weighted sum of two power profiles
PiRES = αP0 + (1 − α)Piu . (1)
The first profile represents the nominal power profile P0 re-
sulting from the “spatially average” RES power in the consid-
ered geographical area. This profile is the same for all RES
units; hence, it represents the correlated part of the RES power
production. The second profile Piu represents the deviation from
that nominal power profile as a result of any possible imperfec-
tions. The profile depends on the conditions of the corresponding
RES unit and is independent of other units. The overall effect of
the aggregated RES power is the contamination of the smooth
aggregated demand profile with fluctuations.
III. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The demand controller has to schedule a large number of ap-
pliances in real time such that the cost of the purchased AS is
minimized. Consumer’s convenience should be guaranteed to
a high level to ensure the continuity of consumers’ DR partic-
ipation. Consumer’s convenience is achieved when deferrable
392 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019
Fig. 2. Demand aggregation model. Each demand request is assigned
to the queue of the highest delay class that is lower than the request’s
deadline.
loads are scheduled to consume their required energy before the
deadline and the temperatures of the TCL appliances are kept
within their deadbands.
As discussed in Section I, it is difficult to use individual de-
mand models when the number of appliances to be scheduled is
large. Hence, we propose a demand aggregation methodology
for residential appliances based on the queueing theory to facil-
itate the scheduling of controllable residential appliances. First,
whenever a controllable appliance needs to consume energy, it
sends a demand request to the energy management controller
(EMC), and then waits until it receives an approval from the
EMC to be turned ON. The demand request simply consists of
the amount of energy required and the maximum number of
time slots the appliance can wait, i.e., a deadline for satisfying
the request. Similar to [14], we introduce a layer that acts as
an interface between different consumer appliances and the de-
mand controller, referred to as the DR management layer, which
assigns the requests into different queues according to their ur-
gencies, i.e., the deadlines for satisfying the requests, where
each queue represents a distinct class of demand, as shown
in Fig. 2. The set of all possible classes Q = {1, 2, . . . , N }
is defined in advance and is the same for all residential
consumers.
A. TCLs as Deferrable Loads
It is relatively easy to generate demand requests from de-
ferrable loads. For example, the energy needed for a washing
machine to complete a washing cycle is known in advance (or
can easily be deduced). The deadline for satisfying the energy
request can be adjusted by the consumer. On the other hand,
demand requests from TCLs cannot be generated in the same
straightforward manner. For TCLs, consumer’s comfort is de-
fined by controlling temperatures to be within certain dead-
bands, not by adjustable delay deadlines as in deferrable loads.
Therefore, we need to deduce a method for representing demand
requests of TCL appliances similar to that of deferrable appli-
ances. Our proposed method is described in the following. First,
we assume that each TCL follows a simple equivalent thermal
parameter model, where the controlled temperature evolves as
follows [15]:
θ(t) = θe + s(t)PTCL Rth
− (θe + s(t)PTCL Rth − θi )e−t/R th C th
where θ and θe are the temperature to be controlled and the
temperature of the TCL’s surroundings, respectively, and Rth ,
Cth , and PTCL are three fixed parameters of the TCL appliance,
representing the thermal resistance, the thermal capacitance,
and the power rating, respectively. The function s(t) is a binary
decision variable that takes either 0 or 1. To achieve consumer’s
convenience, the controlled temperature should be kept within
the deadband
θm in  θ  θm ax (3)
where θm in and θm ax represent the minimum and maximum
temperatures, respectively, beyond which the operation of the
TCL becomes inconvenient for the consumer. Let the appliance
send a request for energy demand whenever the temperature
falls below a certain threshold θs ∈ [θm in , θm ax ], which can be,
for example, the temperature set point. The appliance requires
an energy consumption E and a deadline D for satisfying the
demand. Parameters E and D are selected such that the TCL’s
temperature stays within the deadband between two successive
requests, regardless of the demand controller’s decision.
After sending the demand request, the appliance is not turned
ON until it receives permission from the EMC. The maximum
time that the appliance can wait without causing a discomfort
for the consumer is the period that θ drops from θs to θm in .
Therefore, the longest possible deadline Dm ax can be obtained
from (2) as follows:
 
θs − θe
Dm ax = Rth Cth ln . (4)
θm in − θe
Since the TCL appliance does not have a prior information
when it will receive the permission for power consumption, the
duration of the power consumption K should be specified under
a worst case condition. The TCL power consumption duration
should be sufficiently long for the controlled temperature to rise
above θs . The worst case happens when the appliance receives
the permission exactly at the end of the deadline, when θ is at its
minimum value. Therefore, the minimum power consumption
duration Km in is determined as the time required for θ to rise
from the aforementioned minimum value to θs . The duration
Km in can be derived from (2) as
 
PTCL Rth − (θs − θe )e−D /R th C th
Km in = Rth Cth ln . (5)
PTCL Rth − (θs − θe )
The minimum required energy for satisfying the TCL’s de-
mand is simply given by
Em in = PTCL Km in . (6)
B. Demand Scheduling
We use Lyapunov optimization [16]–[18] to schedule demand
requests. Each queue i ∈ Q is updated according to
Qi (t + 1) = [Qi (t) − xi (t)]+ + ai (t) (7)
where Qi (t), xi (t), and ai (t) are the deferred, the scheduled, and
the newly arrived demands of class i at time slot t, respectively.
(2) The function [x]+ is defined as max{x, 0}.
ELGHITANI AND EL-SAADANY: SMOOTHING NET LOAD DEMAND VARIATIONS USING RESIDENTIAL DEMAND MANAGEMENT 393

In order to take consumers’ comfort into consideration, one

Algorithm 1: Controllable Demand Scheduling Algorithm.
can set different limits (constraints) on queue length, i.e.,
Qi (t)  Qm ax
. However, this approach just provides a soft Input: V ; wi ∀i ∈ Q
i
deadline guarantee, i.e., there can be a nonzero probability that 1: for t ∈ 0, 1, 2, . . . do
a demand request waits beyond the deadline. To provide a hard 2: Measure/read the following variables:
deadline guarantee, we follow the same approach as in [18], r(t), Qi (t), Zi (t) ∀i ∈ Q
where we introduce a set of virtual queues, each is associated 3: Calculate the total optimal scheduling energy xs (t)
with one of the real queues. The virtual queues are updated as by the following equation:
N N
follows:  [Qi (t) + Zi (t)]
i= 1 wi
+
xs (t)  xi (t) = − r(t).
Zi (t + 1) = [Zi (t) − xi (t) + i 1{Q i (t)> 0} ] (8) i= 1
2N V
(10)
where i  E{ai (t)} is a positive constant, and 1{.} is an indi-
4: First individual energy allocation is given by
cator function that equals one when the condition between the
xi (t) = min{xs (t)/N, Qi (t)} ∀i ∈ Q.
braces is satisfied and zero, otherwise. By setting different limits 5: Distribute the remaining energy
on these virtual queues such that Zi (t)  Zim ax , the maximum 
xr (t) = xs (t) − N i=1 xi (t) among queues
waiting time for a request in queue i is given by [18]
arbitrarily wherever possible.
Dim ax = (Qm
i
ax
+ Zim ax )/i . (9) 6: Update Qi (t + 1) according to (7) and Zi (t + 1)
according to (8) ∀i ∈ Q.
On the other hand, the variables {xi (t)} should be controlled
7: end
dynamically to reduce the fluctuations imposed by the noncon-
trollable net demand profile r(t), which represents the resulting
demand after subtracting the portion served by the local RES where Q̄i is the time average of the mean length of queue i.
generation. Our measure for these fluctuations is the time aver- Problem P1 represents an extreme case when consumers are
age of the second moment of the total power consumption willing to wait as long as it takes to achieve the best possi-
⎧
2 ⎫ ble performance c∗ . Practically, residential consumers will set
1  ⎨ ⎬
T −1 N
c̄  lim E r(t) + xi (t) . deadlines for scheduling their demand requests, e.g., as in (4).
T →∞ T ⎩ ⎭ The long-term performance of Algorithm 1 is described in
t=0 i=1
the following theorem.
Hence, our goal is to minimize c̄. We will first propose an Theorem 1: Assuming all queues are initially empty,
algorithm for scheduling the controllable demand {xi (t)}. Af- Qi (0) = 0 and Zi (0) = 0 ∀i ∈ Q, and assuming system inputs
terward, the performance of the proposed algorithm will be ω(t) = {r(t); ai (t) ∀i ∈ Q} are i.i.d. and bounded, then ap-
addressed by Theorems 1 and 2. Our proposed algorithm is plying the Algorithm 1 yields the following results.
described in Algorithm 1. The algorithm needs a set of pos- 1) All queues, both real and virtual, are upper bounded by
itive constants {V ; wi ∀i ∈ Q} as an input, which we will Qm ax
and Zim ax , defined by
i
later describe their effect on the performance of Algorithm 1.
2N V
The algorithm is online, where scheduling decisions are made Qm
i
ax
 {N am
i
ax
+ rm ax } + am
i
ax
based on the current realization of the input stochastic processes wi
{r(t); ai (t) ∀i ∈ Q} and on the system’s history demonstrated and
in the variables {Qi (t), Zi (t) ∀i ∈ Q}. The algorithm does 2N V
not need any form of prediction for the stochastic processes Zim ax  {N i + rm ax } + i .
wi
{r(t); ai (t) ∀i ∈ Q}.
Next, the performance of Algorithm 1 is described by Theo- 2) The finite time horizon average cost satisfies
⎧
2 ⎫
rems 1 and 2, which will be defined shortly. The first theorem is T
 −1 ⎨ N ⎬
1
related to the long-term average behavior of the cost function, E r(t) + xi (t)  c∗ + B/V
whereas the second theorem is related to the short-term sample T ⎩ ⎭
i=1 i=1
path behavior of the cost function.
where B is a constant given by
We begin by setting a benchmark for performance compari-   
son, c∗ . For the long-term behavior, we define c∗ as the infimum N
(xm ax 2
) + (am ax 2
) max 2i , (xm
i
ax 2
)
i i
of the solution of the following stochastic optimization problem: B wi + .
2 2
i=1
P1 : min c̄ (12)
x i ,∀i∈Q
Proof: See Appendix A. 
s.t. (7)
Theorem 1 describes the long-term average performance. We
T −1
1  will now describe the performance of Algorithm 1 from a sample
Q̄i  lim E {Qi (t)} < ∞ ∀i ∈ Q path perspective. We should first find another measure for perfor-
T →∞ T
t=0 mance comparison other than c∗ . We follow a sample path com-
(11) parison, in which we assume that inputs {r(t); ai (t) ∀i ∈ Q}
394 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019

are given in advance for a finite time horizon T . We use this TABLE I
NONCONTROLLABLE APPLIANCES’ PARAMETERS (EXTRACTED FROM
information to define the following deterministic optimization MEASUREMENTS IN [20])
problem:
k T +T −1

N
2
1  
P2 : min ck  r(t) + xi (t)
x i ,∀i∈Q T
t=k T i=1

s.t. (7)
k T
+T −1
[xi (t) − ai (t)]  0 ∀i ∈ Q
t=k T
k T
+T −1 TABLE II
TCL APPLIANCES’ PARAMETERS
[xi (t) − i ]  0 ∀i ∈ Q. (13)
t=k T

We here divided the infinite time horizon into a series of

frames, each of length T , where the scheduling cost of frame k
is given by ck . Hence, our new comparison benchmark will be
the optimal solution of problem P2. Assume we run Algorithm
1 for a number of K frames, then the sample path performance
is given by the following theorem.
Theorem 2: Assuming all queues are initially empty,
Qi (0) = 0 and Zi (0) = 0 ∀i ∈ Q, then applying Algorithm 1
for a number of K frames yields the following sample-path
result:
K T −1
N
2 K −1
1   1  ∗
r(t) + xi (t)  ck + BT /V.
KT T
t=0 i=1 k =0
Proof: See Appendix B.
 rameters include the appliances’ power rating, the probability
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
A. Raw Data
In our simulation, we assume a single type of RES, which
is solar energy. The correlated portion P0 is generated from a
solar irradiance data extracted from [19]. The data are of 1-min
temporal resolution and was collected on May 10th, 2018. Each
consumer is assumed to have 4 PV panels, each of area 1.5 m2
and of 20% power conversion efficiency. The uncorrelated por-
tion Piu is uniformly distributed of the same mean as P0 . The
weighting factor α is taken to be 0.9.
The data collected for the residential demand should be in an
appliance level with a temporal resolution of at least 1 min. The
energy required by an appliance when it is turned ON can usually
be deduced or given in the appliance’s data sheet. However,
the consumer’s behavior toward using this appliance cannot be
easily deduced. The same appliance can be used differently
by different consumers. Therefore, a statistical, appliance-level
demand data should be collected by monitoring each appliance
for a large number of consumers. Unfortunately, such data are
not abundant, since the concern of the operators and planners of
power networks is the aggregated demand of many consumers,
not the appliance-level demand. Nevertheless, there exists a
study [20] that recorded the appliance-level residential demand
for a period of almost two years (2012–2014) for a small number
of consumers (five consumers only). Our approach is to use the
demand data of one of these consumers to represent the demand
behavior of all the consumers in our system. The appliances
used in our study are discussed in the following.
1) Noncontrollable Appliances: We consider three noncon-
trollable appliances having significant energy consumption,
which are TV, kettle, and lighting devices. From the measure-
ment data, we extract the parameters given in Table I. The pa-
that an appliance is turned ON at any given time slot, and the
approximating distribution of their power consumption duration
(with its mean given in brackets in units of time slots).
2) Deferrable Appliances: We consider two appliances
whose demands can be deferred: the washing machine and
the dishwasher. The appliances’ turn ON probabilities are 0.01
for both of them. Their energy demands are 1.772 kWh and
1.186 kWh, respectively.
3) TCL Appliances: The measurements include two TCL
appliances: a fridge and an air conditioning system. However, it
is difficult to deduce different TCL parameters from the power
measurements alone. Hence, we use TCL parameters from other
studies, as given in Table II.
4) Demand Diversity: The aforementioned extracted param-
eters reflect the energy consumption behavior of a single con-
sumer only. Due to the limited available measurements for other
consumers, we make use of the extracted parameters to repre-
sent the demand of a large number of consumers (1000). We
diversify the demand by altering some of these parameters ran-
domly from a consumer to another. The alteration is uniformly
distributed, and variations can reach up to ±10% of the original
values. The altered parameters are the thermal resistance and
capacitance of the TCL appliances, the energy consumption of
the noncontrollable loads, and the switching probability of the
deferrable loads.
Samples of an RES power, noncontrollable demand, and net
noncontrollable demand profiles are shown in Fig. 3.
ELGHITANI AND EL-SAADANY: SMOOTHING NET LOAD DEMAND VARIATIONS USING RESIDENTIAL DEMAND MANAGEMENT
Fig. 3. Random samples for an RES power production of a single con-
sumer (top), aggregated noncontrollable demand profile of all consumers
(middle), and the aggregated “net” noncontrollable demand profile of all
consumers (bottom), where large fluctuations are introduced by the ag-
gregated RES contributions of all consumers.
Fig. 4. Decomposing total net demand profile into a smoothed profile
and an unmatched demand profile (Ψ = 60).
B. Performance Evaluation
We decompose the total aggregated demand profile into two
profiles: First, the demand supplied directly by the GENCO
and, second, the mismatch purchased from the AS market. For
simplicity, we calculate the first profile as the moving average of
the original profile with a window size same as the generator’s
ramping time Ψ. Hence, the first profile represents a smoothed
version of the original profile. The mismatch profile is simply
calculated by taking the difference between the original profile
and its smoothed version, as illustrated in Fig. 4.
Several total demand profiles under our proposed methodol-
ogy are depicted in Fig. 5. For simplicity, we assumed a single
class of controllable demands. From Fig. 5, it is clear that the
fluctuations are reduced as the demand scheduling deadline in-
creases. This behavior is intuitive since longer scheduling dead-
lines will provide more flexibility for the demand controller.
From a mathematical point of view, longer deadlines imply
larger values for the tradeoff parameter V , which allows the
total net profile to approach its optimal shape, as implied from
395
Fig. 5. Total net demand profiles for different demand scheduling dead-
lines.
TABLE III
RELATIVE COST COMPARISON FOR THE PROFILES IN FIG. 5
Fig. 6. Comparison between the proposed methodology and “looka-
head” methodology.
Theorem 1. A comparison of the relative cost for each of the
generated profiles is given in Table III.
We compare our proposed methodology to “lookahead”
methodology used in several related works (see, e.g., [9]). In
this methodology, RES profile is forecast first, then the control-
lable demand is scheduled accordingly, as a solution of a deter-
ministic convex optimization problem. The performance of this
methodology largely depends on the forecasting accuracy, be-
sides its excessive computational complexity. Our performance
measure is the relative cost of AS purchased, which is the ra-
tio between the cost under DR and without DR (no delay). For
simplicity, we consider a single class of controllable demand.
Fig. 6 plots the relative cost versus deadline for both method-
ologies assuming a 20% forecasting error for the latter. As the
396 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019

following set of inequalities hold:

E{xi (t)}  E{ai (t)} ∀i ∈ Q. (14)
Proof: See [17, Appendix 4.A]. 
The importance of Lemma 1 is that it let us focus on ω-only
policies, i.e., policies that observe only the current state of the
system and not the entire system history. Thus, if we find a
policy that is optimal among ω-only policies, it will be optimal
among all other policies as well.
We proceed to use Lyapunov optimization that is supposed
to provide different limits on all queues (real and virtual),
in addition to minimizing the objective function in P1. Lya-
punov optimization avoids dynamic programming by develop-
ing a greedy algorithm (that will become Algorithm 1), which
minimizes both the objective function and the queueing cost.
Fig. 7. Performance under different number of queues normalized to
First, we introduce a measure of queueing congestion,
 referred

the performance of single queue. to as Lyapunov function L(Θ(t))  12 i wi Q2i (t) + Zi2 (t) ,
where Θ(t) is the state of all queues {Qi (t), Zi (t)} and {wi }
deadline increases, the performance of our methodology im- are proper weights to treat queues differently according to their
proves. In contrast, the performance of the “lookahead” method- classes. The queueing cost we aim to minimize is the conditional
ology deteriorates when the lookahead horizon (deadline) is Lyapunov drift given by
large. Δ(Θ(t))  E{L(Θ(t + 1)) − L(Θ(t))|Θ(t)}. (15)
Finally, we investigate the benefit of using a multiclass queue-
ing system. Increasing the number of queues allows more ef- The following lemma provides an upper bound on Δ(Θ(t)).
ficient assignment of controllable demand requests; however, Lemma 2: Assuming that scheduling decisions are bounded,
it decreases the arrival rate per queue, which in turn decreases i.e., 0  xi (t)  xm
i
ax
, then Lyapunov drift at any time slot t is
queues’ capability for regulation. Hence, we can expect that for upper bounded by the following expression:
each distribution of demand requests, there is an optimal num- N
 
ber of queues that achieves the best performance (lower cost). Δ(Θ(t))  B + wi Qi (t)E{ai (t) − xi (t)}
The cost of purchasing AS for different numbers of queues i=1
(normalized to the cost under single queue) is shown in Fig. 7. 
+ Zi (t)E{i − xi (t)}|Θ(t) . (16)
The figure shows that the performance improves rapidly as the
number of classes’ increases until the number of classes reaches Proof: From (8)
seven, after which the cost starts to increase slowly.
Zi (t + 1)  [Zi (t) − xi (t) + i ]+
V. CONCLUSION and hence
In this paper, we propose a methodology for residential de- wi Zi2 (t + 1)  wi [Zi (t) − xi (t) + i ]2 .
mand management to reduce the fluctuations imposed by a large-
scale integration of renewable energy sources. Our methodology Thus,
is composed of two steps: The first step is to classify the demand
wi [Zi2 (t + 1) − Zi2 (t)]
requirements of different residential appliances to fixed classes
of demands, according to their delay tolerances. The second  wi [i − xi (t)]2 + 2wi Zi (t)[i − xi (t)]
step is to use Lyapunov optimization to schedule the demands  
deferred in different queues. The resulting algorithm is compu-  wi max 2i , (xm i
ax 2
) + 2wi Zi (t)[i − xi (t)].
tationally efficient that makes it suitable for running in real time. Similarly from (7)
The methodology does not need highly restrictive assumptions
and it is proved effective under realistic data. wi [Q2i (t + 1) − Q2i (t)]
 wi [x2i (t) + a2i (t) − 2xi (t)ai (t)] + 2wi Qi (t)[ai (t) − xi (t)]
APPENDIX A
PROOF OF THEOREM 1  wi [(xm
i
ax 2
) + (am
i
ax 2
) ] + 2wi Qi (t)[ai (t) − xi (t)].
We begin with characterizing c∗ using the following lemma. Substituting these bounds in the definition of Lyapunov drift
Lemma 1: Assuming that the optimization problem (P1) is [see (15)] proves the lemma. 
feasible and that the system inputs, ω(t)  {ai (t), r(t)}, are The greedy algorithm is simply composed of minimizing both
independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) processes, then the drift bound defined in (16) and the second moment of the
there exist an ω-only policy that can achieve c∗ . In addition, the total power consumption weighted by a tradeoff parameter V .
ELGHITANI AND EL-SAADANY: SMOOTHING NET LOAD DEMAND VARIATIONS USING RESIDENTIAL DEMAND MANAGEMENT 397

Thus, for each time slot t, we solve the following problem: By taking the expectation on both sides
⎧
2 ⎫
⎨ N
 ⎬ E{L(Θ(t + 1)} − E{L(Θ(t)}
P3 : min V E r(t) + xi (t) ⎧
2 ⎫
x i ,∀i∈Q ⎩ ⎭ ⎨ N
 ⎬
i=1
+VE r(t) + xi (t)  B + V c∗ . (19)
N
 ⎩ ⎭
i=1
− wi [Qi (t) + Zi (t)] E{xi (t)}. (17)
i=1 By summing from t = 0 to t = T − 1, then
Problem P3 can simply be solved by setting the gradi- E{L(Θ(T )} − E{L(Θ(0)}
ent of the objective function to zero, which yields (10) of ⎧
2 ⎫
Algorithm 1. T
 ⎨ N
 ⎬
We now focus on proving the part 1 of the theorem. Since +V E r(t) + xi (t)  BT + V T c∗ . (20)
⎩ ⎭
t=0 i=1
all queues were initially empty, then Qi (0)  Qm i
ax
. Assume,
m ax
at an arbitrary time t0 , that Qi (t0 )  Qi . If we attempt to However, L(Θ(0) = 0 (since queues are initially empty) and
prove that Qi (t0 + 1)  Qm i
ax
, then Qi (t)  Qm i
ax
for all t L(Θ(t)  0 for any time slot, and hence
by induction. We divide our solution into two complementary ⎧
2 ⎫
cases: First, when Qi (t0 )  Qm ax
− am ax
and, second, when T
 −1 ⎨ N ⎬
i i
Qim ax
− aim ax m ax
< Qi (t0 )  Qi . For the first case, it is obvious V E r(t) + xi (t)  BT + V T c∗ . (21)
⎩ ⎭
that Qi (t0 + 1)  Qm i
ax
, since Qi (t) can be incremented by at t=0 i=1
m ax
most ai . For the second case Dividing by V T completes the proof.
wi Qi (t0 ) > 2N V {N am
i
ax
+r m ax
}
APPENDIX B
and, hence, by using the result in (10) PROOF OF THEOREM 2
N
wi [Qi (t0 ) + Zi (t0 )] r(t0 ) We define the T -slot sample-path drift as follows:
xi = i=1 −
2N 2 V N
ΔT (Θ(t))  L(Θ(t + T )) − L(Θ(t))
wi Qi (t0 ) r(t0 )
 − > am i
ax
.
2N 2 V N which can be rewritten as follows:
We then divide the second case into two complementary sub- t+T
−1
cases: First, when Qi (t0 )  xi (t0 ), and second, when Qi (t0 ) > ΔT (Θ(t)) = L(Θ(t + j)) − L(Θ(t + j − 1)).
xi (t0 ). For the first subcase Qi (t0 + 1) = ai (t0 + 1)  am
i
ax
 j =t
m ax
Qi . For the second subcase, Qi (t0 ) will be decremented by From the proof provided in lemma 2
at least am i
ax
− ai (t0 + 1), and hence, Qi (t0 + 1)  Qi (t0 )  
t+T
−1 N
Qi . Hence, under all circumstances, Qi (t0 + 1)  Qm
m ax
i
ax
. 
m ax ΔT (Θ(t))  B+ wi Qi (j){ai (j) − xi (j)}
Similar argument can be made for Zi .
j =t i=1
The second part of the theorem can be proved as follows. 
According to the i.i.d. assumptions, the results in Lemma 1 can 
be applied. We refer to the decisions of the optimal ω-only + Zi (j){i − xi (j)}
policy as xω i . Our greedy algorithm is not an ω-only policy, 
as the scheduling decisions depend on Θ(t) as well; however, t+T
−1 N
 
it minimizes the objective function in P3 among all policies = BT + wi Qi (j){ai (j) − xi (j)}
including the optimal ω-only policy, thus j =t i=1
⎧
2 ⎫

⎨ N
 ⎬ 
Δ(Θ(t)) + V E r(t) + xi (t) + Zi (j){i − xi (j)} . (22)
⎩ ⎭
i= 1
⎧
2 ⎫ We attempt to provide an upper bound for the future values
⎨ N
 ⎬
B+VE r(t) + xω of various random variables. Since the maximum increment for
⎩ i (t) ⎭
i= 1 any queue is its maximum arrival rate, then
N
 Qi (j){ai (j) − xi (j)}  {Qi (t) + (j − t)am
i
ax
}{ai (j) − xi (j)}
+ wi [Qi (t)E{ai (t) − xω ω
i (t)} + Zi (t)E{i − xi (t)}|Θ(t)] .
i= 1
 Qi (t){ai (j) − xi (j)} + (j − t)(am
i
ax 2
)

By applying Lemma 2, it results and

⎧
2 ⎫
⎨ N ⎬ Zi (j){i − xi (j)}  {Zi (t) + (j − t)i }{i − xi (j)}
Δ(Θ(t)) + V E r(t) + xi (t)  B + V c∗ . (18)
⎩ ⎭  Zi (t){i − xi (j)} + (j − t)2i .
i=1
398 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019

By substituting into (22) [13] J. Widén and E. Wäckelgård, “A high-resolution stochastic model of
domestic activity patterns and electricity demand,” Appl. Energy, vol. 87,
N
 t+T
−1
(2i + (am
i
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) )T (T − 1) no. 6, pp. 1880–1892, Jun. 2010.
ΔT (Θ(t))  BT + wi + [14] F. Elghitani and W. Zhuang, “Aggregating a large number of residential
i
2 j =t
appliances for demand response applications,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid,
to be published.
N  [15] P. Du and N. Lu, “Appliance commitment for household load scheduling,”
 IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 411–419, May 2011.
× wi [Qi (t){ai (j) − xi (j)} + Zi (t){i − xi (j)}] . [16] M. J. Neely, “Energy optimal control for time-varying wireless networks,”
i=1 IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 2915–2934, Jul. 2006.
(23) [17] M. J. Neely, Stochastic Network Optimization With Application to Com-
munication and Queueing Systems(Synthesis Lectures on Communica-
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pp. 1–211.
N
 [18] M. J. Neely, A. S. Tehrani, and A. G. Dimakis, “Efficient algorithms for
(2i + (ami
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wi B renewable energy allocation to delay tolerant consumers,” in Proc. 1st
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2 IEEE Int. Conf. Smart Grid Commun., Oct. 2010, pp. 549–554.
[19] Website of National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Baseline
then Measurement System (BMS), May 2018. [Online]. Available:
http://http://www.nrel.gov/
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−1 [20] J. Kelly and W. Knottenbelt, “The UK-DALE dataset, domestic appliance-
ΔT (Θ(t))  BT 2 + level electricity demand and whole-house demand from five UK homes,”
Sci. Data, vol. 2, Mar. 2015, Art. no. 150007.
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procedure used for proving theorem 1. The rest of the proof is
eliminated for brevity.

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Fadi Elghitani received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. de-
grees from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt,
and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
He is currently an Assistant Lecturer with
the National Telecommunication Institute, Cairo,
Egypt. His research interests include smart grid
and wireless communications.
Ehab El-Saadany (F’18) was born in Cairo,
Egypt, in 1964. He received the B.Sc. and
M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Ain
Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1986 and
1990, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering from the University of Water-
loo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1998.
He is a Professor with the Department of Elec-
trical and Computer Engineering, University of
Waterloo. His research interests include smart
grid operation and control, power quality, dis-
tributed generation, power electronics, digital signal processing applica-
tions to power systems, and mechatronics.
Prof. El-Saadany is a Canada Research Chair in Smart Distribution
Systems, an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID and the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, and a Registered Professional
Engineer in the Province of Ontario.