Algorithms for Fair Load Shedding in Developing Countries

Algorithms for Fair Load Shedding in Developing Countries

Olabambo I. Oluwasuji, Obaid Malik, Jie Zhang, Sarvapali D. Ramchurn

Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 1590-1596. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/220

Due to the limited generation capacity of power stations, many developing countries frequently resort to disconnecting large parts of the power grid from supply, a process termed load shedding. During load shedding, many homes are left without electricity, causing them inconvenience and discomfort. In this paper, we present a number of optimization heuristics that focus on pairwise and groupwise fairness, such that households (i.e. agents) are fairly allocated electricity. We evaluate the heuristics against standard fairness metrics in terms of comfort delivered to homes, as well as the number of times they are disconnected from electricity supply. Thus, we establish new benchmarks for fair load shedding schemes.
Keywords:
Humans and AI: Personalization and User Modeling
Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: Computational Sustainability