All ETDs from UAB

Advisory Committee Chair

Hessam Taherian

Advisory Committee Members

David L Littlefield

Pradeep K Vitta

Peter M Walsh

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

2016

Degree Name by School

Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering (MSBME) School of Engineering

Abstract

Home energy management systems encourages the users coupled to the grid to modify their electricity consumption in response to fluctuating electricity rates. The purpose of this research is to develop a distributed home energy management system for the end-user to employ in order to minimize costs. Using the home energy management system, the end-user will find and optimal start times for their appliances in response to varying electricity prices. First, the cost for each user and time-constraints for the appliance is modeled. Then, an iterative greedy algorithm is employed by the user to create an appliance schedule. The only variable available to the user is the day-ahead electricity price published by the utility company. The electricity price is defined by the aggregated load of all users in the grid and not just the load profile of the individual user. In order to assure convergence of the iterative algorithm, a penalty term in the cost function is introduced. The penalty term penalizes large changes in the appliance scheduling iterative process. Numerical solutions prove that this optimization method results in lower generation costs for the utility company, lower peak load, reduced load fluctuations, and, ultimately, lower cost for the consumer.

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