Consumer Preference Electricity Usage Plan for Demand Side Management in the Smart Grid

High peak demand is often a challenge to the grid and could result into measures such as procurement of additional plants to meet the peak demand, higher tariffs for consumers, undesirable load shedding or even black-outs. However, these issues can be mitigated by introducing Demand Side Management (DSM) techniques for effective energy management of consumers’ peak demand. In this paper, an enhanced Device Operation Knowledge - Electricity Usage Plan (DOK-EUP) is proposed, which applies time independencies of selected smart home appliances for peak demand reduction based on their operation principles and for consumer's benefit. The proposed DOK-EUP technique was tested with the surveyed demand profile of a Time-of-Use (TOU) consumer and results showed lower morning and evening peak demands, lower peak-to-peak difference, shift in peak period to traditional off-peak periods, financial savings for the consumers and utility provider, and a cleaner environment.