Optimal power control strategy of a hybrid energy system considering demand response strategy and customer interruption cost

Background: The integration of distributed renewable energy sources into the conventional power system network has created opportunities for electricity customers to reduce their electricity cost. This paper investigates the optimal power scheduling of a hybrid energy system connected to the grid in the presence of demand response strategy and inconvenience cost. Methods: A new proposed method of calculating the inconvenience cost which is dependent on total home appliance load, Customer Interruption Cost (CIC) and delay time operation of home appliances is proposed. The hybrid energy system consists of solar photovoltaic (PV) module and battery bank storage system. The home appliance scheduling is formulated as a non-convex mixed integer programming with a binary decision variable to switch ON/OFF the home appliances. The optimization objective is to minimize both the total daily electricity cost and inconvenience cost of a residential customer with different time-shiftable, power shiftable home appliances and customer time preference constraints. Results: The results show that it is important to schedule home appliances and include their inconvenience cost so that home appliances are not only shifted to the lower electricity tariff periods but can also start at their customer preferred operation times. Conclusion: The results also show that the hybrid energy system is able to cater for all the energy requirements of home appliances during the day, reducing power demand from the grid by a significant percentage and thus, relieve the power system network and afford electricity consumers significant monetary savings.