A Nowcasting Central Controller with Continuous RTP for Residential Device Scheduling using Swap-Based BFPSO

Energy management plays an important role in the residential sector allowing consumers to take control over their energy consumption w.r.t. the market fluctuations. For a long time, forecasting model-based scheduling was thought as a way to mitigate the expected versus reality electricity pricing gap. However, it does not always present a working model owing to uncertainties involved around it. This paper presents a scheduling model having a Nowcasting Central Controller. This model is designed for residential devices using continuous RTP and targets on optimizing the device schedule in the current time slot as well as the subsequent time slots. It is dependent on the current input data and less on the past dataset, making it implemen at any situation. To solve the optimization problem, four variants of PSO in conjunction with swapping operation are implemented on the proposed model by considering a normalized objective function made up of two cost metrics. The results demonstrate a quickness and reduction in costs by BFPSO at each time slot. A comparison is carried out among different pricing schemes that clearly establish the effectiveness of CRTP over DAP and TOD. With CRTP performing the best of the lot, the NCC model is found to be highly adaptable and robust to sudden changes in pricing schemes.