Optimal load clipping with time of use rates

Abstract

We present four heuristic algorithms and one suboptimal method based on dynamic programming for limiting the overload in electricity consumption. The dynamic successive programming method has developed to work with “time of use rates”, i.e., hourly buying and selling rates of electricity. Our dynamic programming method optimizes one load at a time and uses states sparingly. Gained time savings are 50–90%, depending on the difficulty in the clipping situation, compared to dynamic programming methods not using state saving. The heuristic methods are still very much faster than the methods based on dynamic programming. Tests show that these algorithms are well suited for their purpose.