Predictive resource allocation for flexible loads with local QoS

Abstract: Loads that can vary their power consumption without violating their Quality of service (QoS), that is flexible loads, are an invaluable resource for grid operators. Utilizing flexible loads as a resource requires the grid operator to incorporate them into a resource allocation problem. Since flexible loads are often consumers, for concerns of privacy it is desirable for this problem to have a distributed implementation. Technically, this distributed implementation manifests itself as a time varying convex optimization problem constrained by the QoS of each load. In the literature, a time invariant form of this problem without all of the necessary QoS metrics for the flexible loads is often considered. Moving to a more realistic setup introduces additional technical challenges, due to the problems' time-varying nature. In this work, we develop an algorithm to account for the challenges introduced when considering a time varying setup with appropriate QoS metrics.