SmartCap: Flattening Peak Electricity Demand in Smart Homes

Flattening household electricity demand reduces generation costs, since costs are disproportionately affected by peak demands. While the vast majority of household electrical loads are interactive and have little scheduling flexibility (TVs, microwaves, etc.), a substantial fraction of home energy use derives from background loads with some, albeit limited, flexibility. Examples of such devices include A/Cs, refrigerators, and dehumidifiers. In this paper, the authors study the extent to which a home is able to transparently flatten its electricity demand by scheduling only background loads with such flexibility. They propose a Least Slack First (LSF) scheduling algorithm for household loads, inspired by the well-known Earliest Deadline First algorithm.