Abstract:

In this talk we consider the problem of scheduling two types of home appliances: ones with fixed power and flexible operation time and others with fixed operation time and flexible power. We consider energy consumption bounds that depend on the time of the day, which modify considerably the computational complexity of the appliance scheduling problems. Additionally, we also take into account the possibility that appliances with flexible operation time could be interrupted. The goal of the decision-making process is to minimize the electricity bill paid by the users and the discomfort perceived by them, according to a desired-tradeoff, subject to the operation constraints involved. As we demonstrate, these problems turn out to be NP-hard, so several heuristics we designed are described, explaining their foundations. Finally, we discuss some ideas for exact algorithms.

Bio:
Sebastian Taboh is an PhD student in the Computer Science Research Institute at University of Buenos Aires (Argentina).