@article {23493,
	title = {User-Centric Demand Response Management in the Smart Grid With Multiple Providers},
	journal = {IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing},
	year = {2014},
	note = {Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing. Published Online: July 8, 2014},
	month = {07/2015},
	publisher = {IEEE},
	abstract = {The smart grid is the next generation power grid with bidirectional communications between the electricity users and the providers. Demand response management is vital in the smart grid to reduce power generation costs as well as to lower the users{\textquoteright} electricity bills. In this paper, we introduce multiple fossil-fuel and multiple renewable energy sources-based utility companies on the supply side, and propose an end-user oriented utility company selection scheme to minimize user costs. We formulate the problem as a game, incorporating the uncertainty associated with the power supply of the renewable sources, and prove that there exists a Nash equilibrium for the game. To further reduce users{\textquoteright} costs, we develop a joint scheme by integrating shiftable load scheduling with utility company selection. We model the joint scheme also as a game, and prove the existence of a Nash equilibrium for the game. For both schemes, we propose distributedalgorithms for the users to nd the equilibrium of the game using only local information. We evaluate our schemes and compare their performances to two other approaches. The results show that our joint utility company selection and shiftable load scheduling scheme incurs the least cost to the users.},
	keywords = {Demand response management, discrete time Markov chain, game theory, Nash equilibrium, renewable energy sources, smart grid, user cost.},
	author = {Maharjan, Sabita and Zhang, Yan and Gjessing, Stein and Tsang, Danny}
}
