Investigation of electricity load shifting under various tariff design using ant colony optimization algorithm

Abstract

A price-based program through a time of use tariff (TOU) program is one of the initiatives to offer sufficient benefit for both consumers and generations sides. However, without any strategy for implementing optimal load management, a new tariff design structure will lead to the miss perception by electricity consumers. Therefore, this study offers an investigation toward appropriate TOU tariff design to reflect load profiles. Concurrently, the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm was proposed to deal with the load shifting strategy to determine the best load profiles and reducing the consumers’ electricity cost. The sample load profiles data is obtained from various residential houses, such as single-story, double-story, semi-D, apartment, and bungalow houses. The significant comparison between baseline flat tariffs to several TOU tariffs has shown an improvement in the percentage of cost saving for approximately 7 to 40%. Furthermore, the identified load management was observed where the maximum load shifting weightage was set up to 30% to reflect the consumers’ effort towards energy efficiency (EE) program. The previously proposed TOU design was identified to be a suitable structure that can promote balancing of EE and demand response (DR) program effort in most consumers' houses category in Malaysia.