The iterative and distributed nature of the most recent mechanisms for residential load shifting heavily relies on the smart grid IP-based communication networks that enable them. Nonetheless, little work has been carried out on the practicalities of evaluating the communication parameters that heavily influence the performance of such mechanisms. This paper builds on the authors’ previous paper, a distributed residential load-shifting algorithm for efficient renewable energy consumption, and presents a model of an application layer protocol that integrates the algorithm’s functionality. Simulation results for the communication parameters having negative impact on the performance of the algorithm in terms of available iterations are presented.