The Many Faces of Real-Time Scheduling Applied to Power Load Management

In the field of power systems there is an active research on methods to limit the peak load of power demand. Recently, a new approach to the automatic management of electric loads has been proposed, which is based on scheduling techniques derived from real-time computing systems. The research on real-time scheduling encompasses several aspects, including scheduling algorithms and analysis techniques, that may suitably be adapted to the management of sets of power loads. This paper overviews background concepts on real-time scheduling, and fosters their possible application to the power load management, with special focus on peak load reduction. Several issues regarding the power load management and possible solutions based on real-time scheduling are considered. Due to the wide scope of the proposed methodologies, only the indication of their applicability is provided in this paper. For more complex scenarios, references to previous related works are provided when available. Keywords-Modeling; Real-time systems; Power system control; Scheduling; Smart Grid; Demand-Side Management; Direct Load Control; Load Shedding.