Real-time scheduling for industrial load management

A new approach based on real-time scheduling has been recently proposed for the management of electric loads composing a power system with the goal to reduce the peak load of power consumption. The novel idea is to model the power system in terms of timing parameters traditionally adopted in the field of real-time computing systems. In this way, the activation/deactivation of devices can be managed using classical scheduling algorithms developed for executing processing tasks in real-time systems. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, this paper shows its application to an industrial plant. Electric loads are modeled using timing parameters and a real-time scheduler is used to coordinate their activation. The coordinated management achieves the peak load reduction while meeting given constraints on the industrial process under control. The paper presents the modeling approach of the industrial process. The behavior of the control method is assessed by a simulated example.