Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding

In developing countries like South Africa, users experienced more than 1 030 hours of load shedding outages in just the first half of 2023 due to inadequate power supply from the national grid. Residential homes that cannot afford to take actions to mitigate the challenges of load shedding are sever...

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Main Authors: Sakhile Twala, Xianming Ye, Xiaohua Xia, Lijun Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. 2023-11-01
Series:Journal of Automation and Intelligence
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949855423000497
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author Sakhile Twala
Xianming Ye
Xiaohua Xia
Lijun Zhang
author_facet Sakhile Twala
Xianming Ye
Xiaohua Xia
Lijun Zhang
author_sort Sakhile Twala
collection DOAJ
description In developing countries like South Africa, users experienced more than 1 030 hours of load shedding outages in just the first half of 2023 due to inadequate power supply from the national grid. Residential homes that cannot afford to take actions to mitigate the challenges of load shedding are severely inconvenienced as they have to reschedule their demand involuntarily. This study presents optimal strategies to guide households in determining suitable scheduling and sizing solutions for solar home systems to mitigate the inconvenience experienced by residents due to load shedding. To start with, we predict the load shedding stages that are used as input for the optimal strategies by using the K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) algorithm. Based on an accurate forecast of the future load shedding patterns, we formulate the residents’ inconvenience and the loss of power supply probability during load shedding as the objective function. When solving the multi-objective optimisation problem, four different strategies to fight against load shedding are identified, namely (1) optimal home appliance scheduling (HAS) under load shedding; (2) optimal HAS supported by solar panels; (3) optimal HAS supported by batteries, and (4) optimal HAS supported by the solar home system with both solar panels and batteries. Among these strategies, appliance scheduling with an optimally sized 9.6 kWh battery and a 2.74 kWp panel array of five 550 Wp panels, eliminates the loss of power supply probability and reduces the inconvenience by 92% when tested under the South African load shedding cases in 2023.
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spelling doaj-art-a79509d48c3344c5ae724c67d27d18d62025-08-20T03:42:41ZengKeAi Communications Co., Ltd.Journal of Automation and Intelligence2949-85542023-11-012422723810.1016/j.jai.2023.12.001Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load sheddingSakhile Twala0Xianming Ye1Xiaohua Xia2Lijun Zhang3Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South AfricaDepartment of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa; Corresponding author.Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South AfricaSchool of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, ChinaIn developing countries like South Africa, users experienced more than 1 030 hours of load shedding outages in just the first half of 2023 due to inadequate power supply from the national grid. Residential homes that cannot afford to take actions to mitigate the challenges of load shedding are severely inconvenienced as they have to reschedule their demand involuntarily. This study presents optimal strategies to guide households in determining suitable scheduling and sizing solutions for solar home systems to mitigate the inconvenience experienced by residents due to load shedding. To start with, we predict the load shedding stages that are used as input for the optimal strategies by using the K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) algorithm. Based on an accurate forecast of the future load shedding patterns, we formulate the residents’ inconvenience and the loss of power supply probability during load shedding as the objective function. When solving the multi-objective optimisation problem, four different strategies to fight against load shedding are identified, namely (1) optimal home appliance scheduling (HAS) under load shedding; (2) optimal HAS supported by solar panels; (3) optimal HAS supported by batteries, and (4) optimal HAS supported by the solar home system with both solar panels and batteries. Among these strategies, appliance scheduling with an optimally sized 9.6 kWh battery and a 2.74 kWp panel array of five 550 Wp panels, eliminates the loss of power supply probability and reduces the inconvenience by 92% when tested under the South African load shedding cases in 2023.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949855423000497Load sheddingInconvenienceOptimal scheduling and sizing strategiesK-Nearest Neighbour (KNN)Multi-objective mixed integer nonlinear optimisation
spellingShingle Sakhile Twala
Xianming Ye
Xiaohua Xia
Lijun Zhang
Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
Journal of Automation and Intelligence
Load shedding
Inconvenience
Optimal scheduling and sizing strategies
K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN)
Multi-objective mixed integer nonlinear optimisation
title Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
title_full Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
title_fullStr Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
title_full_unstemmed Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
title_short Optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
title_sort optimal integration of solar home systems and appliance scheduling for residential homes under severe national load shedding
topic Load shedding
Inconvenience
Optimal scheduling and sizing strategies
K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN)
Multi-objective mixed integer nonlinear optimisation
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949855423000497
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AT xiaohuaxia optimalintegrationofsolarhomesystemsandapplianceschedulingforresidentialhomesunderseverenationalloadshedding
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