Evaluation and Analysis of Scheduling Algorithms for Peak Power Reduction

Peak power reduction is becoming increasingly important not only for grid operators but also for residential users. The scheduling of electric loads tries to reduce the power peak by splitting the power-on period of an electric device into multiple smaller ones and by interleaving the on-periods of every device in a holistic way. This paper analyzes the performance of EDF, LSF, TCBM, and lazy scheduling algorithms and proposes the enhancement schemes. For analysis, we have implemented the scheduling policies in a simulation environment for distributed control systems. Through extensive experiments using real power traces, we discuss their performance characteristics in terms of power deviation, switch count, and temperature violation ratio. To prevent excessive switching, we propose to employ the concept of limited preemptibility and evaluate its effect on performance. It is found that the best performance is achieved when the scheduler capacity is dynamically adjusted to the actual power demand. The experiment results show that, by load scheduling, the probability of having a power deviation greater than 150W is reduced from 21.5% down to 3.2%.