Multi-User Optimal Load Scheduling of Different Objectives Combined with Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Smart Grid

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A brief mention of why existing methods are insufficient or what gaps this paper addresses needs to be mentioned in the abstract.

The term “co-cooperative” appears to be a typo. It should likely be “cooperative.” If it is not a typo, then inconsistently used throughout the paper and needs to be revised everywhere.

Using acronyms like MAHA, ToU, and ACLPS without immediate expansion makes the text harder to follow. Please ensure all abbreviations are spelled out when first introduced.

In the introduction section, when the authors mention the scope of related studies, it is critical to reference some of the studies to back the argument.

Please explain the algorithms1, function of each step, and analyze the time complexity.

Paper is difficult to follow. As an example, Section II is written as a single paragraph with no proper organization or structuring. 

What is the purpose of the following text? I don't understand why authors need it. "This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn."

I suggest using subfigure to create a single figure for figures 2-7. In the current form, it is too difficult to compare power usage for different users and the whole system. The same is true for the tables as well.

The manuscript lacks a description of future work. Addressing potential future directions is essential for demonstrating the broader impact and scalability of the research.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are many grammatical mistakes that need to be corrected. E.g., line 229 truth -> true.

Author Response

Dear Editor of Future Internet Journal

The authors of the manuscript would like to thank the Future Internet’s editorial office members as well as the reviewers for their valued comments and feedback which enriched the manuscript. We have revised our manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. Below are our detailed responses to the received comments. Please note that the comments of the reviewers are colored black, while the authors’ responses are colored red. Moreover, the modified or added parts to the manuscript are colored red, except the language corrections which have been corrected and kept written in black color.

 

Best regards

Yaarob Al-Nidawi

 

Reviewer-1:

A brief mention of why existing methods are insufficient or what gaps this paper addresses needs to be mentioned in the abstract.

Thank you for your comment and the authors appreciate the time you have given in reviewing our manuscript. According to your comment, we have revised the abstract by adding the following sentence to mention the gap.

“Matching between the objectives of users and utilities is the main gap that should be addressed in the demand response context.”

The term “co-cooperative” appears to be a typo. It should likely be “cooperative.” If it is not a typo, then inconsistently used throughout the paper and needs to be revised everywhere.

Thank you for this comment. We are sorry for this typo and it has been corrected for the entire manuscript.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using acronyms like MAHA, ToU, and ACLPS without immediate expansion makes the text harder to follow. Please ensure all abbreviations are spelled out when first introduced.
Thank you for your comments. We have defined all missing acronyms for the first introduction as follows:

Page1, lines 19-20, Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR)

Page4, line 194, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM)

Page 4, lines 198-199, technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS)

 

In the introduction section, when the authors mention the scope of related studies, it is critical to reference some of the studies to back the argument.

Thank you for your comment on improving our manuscript. We have added the references related to the scope of studies as below:

“The available studies for load scheduling deal with cost and energy saving. However, these studies have the following issues: First, most studies have covered only one user of limited appliances [6-11]. These approaches may contribute to load and energy saving by using load scheduling but did not consider the load synchronization to prevent the generation of new peak load during load shifting. Second, combing many objectives is mostly converted into single objective using aggregated weighted sum model [6-11, 13, 15, 17, 18]. Third, multi-criteria-decision making has not widely utilized in sorting the given Pareto front solutions [6-11, 13-15, 17, 18]. ”       

 

 

 

Please explain the algorithms1, function of each step, and analyze the time complexity.

Thank you for your comment for improving our manuscript. In order to shorten our manuscript and prevent repetition., we have discussed the stages of MAHA in section 4.1, where algorithm 1 is the abstract of the mentioned section. As regards to time complexity analysis, we have added the following paragraph for analyzing the time complexity of MAHA, “The time computational complexity of the proposed MAHA depends on the initialization, evaluation of fitness functions ( ), the update of hummingbirds’ position, the population size ( ), the number of decision variables ( ) and the maximum number of iterations ( ). Thus, the overall computational complexity of MAHA can be presented by:

 

                    "

 

Paper is difficult to follow. As an example, Section II is written as a single paragraph with no proper organization or structuring. What is the purpose of the following text? I don't understand why authors need it. "This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn."

Thank you for your comment on improving our manuscript. We agree with the reviewer point as this paragraph has some ambiguity and some other paragraphs in the paper weren’t written properly. Accordingly, this paragraph has been deleted and the paper has been investigated to determine any other existed mistakes and have been amended to make the modified manuscript more accurate.   

 

I suggest using subfigure to create a single figure for figures 2-7. In the current form, it is too difficult to compare power usage for different users and the whole system. The same is true for the tables as well.

Thank you for your comment. We have tried to combine Figs. 2-7 in a single figure by using a subfigure, but this led to the loss of some details as the size of the figures shall be small. Meanwhile, regarding tables 5-7 (in the previous version) which include the cost and peak for many users considering load scheduling based on TOU and ACLPS pricing schemes, they have been modified. The authors have moved the tables mentioned above into “Appendix A” according to the comment of the second reviewer.

 

The manuscript lacks a description of future work. Addressing potential future directions is essential for demonstrating the broader impact and scalability of the research.

Thank you for your comment. The future work for the current work has been added in the conclusion section.

“For future work, that is based on the proposed work, adaptive MAHA parameters will be considered as well as renewable energy sources should included.”   

 

There are many grammatical mistakes that need to be corrected. E.g., line 229 truth -> true.

Thank you for your comment on improving our manuscript. We have revised the manuscript to consider your comment regarding English language mistakes and the paper has went through another round of proof-reading.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Point 2 contains only one paragraph and is very difficult to read (pp. 3 and 4). It demonstrates the authors' deep knowledge of the domain and the contribution of their approach. In my opinion, individual studies should be grouped according to some principle and presented in separate paragraphs. For example, by their goals, such as reducing costs, peak-power-consumption or carbon-emissions, or by the approach/ algorithm used in them. In this way, point 2’s volume can also be shortened, and the authors will have the more volume to clarify the data shown in the other chapters.

Point 7 proves the contribution of the approach compared to existing approaches to date. Therefore, I believe that although not a one created by the authors of the article, the approach of Setlhaolo and Xia can be described in more detail to highlight the novelty and the contribution of the authors' approach. This can be done at point 7 or at point 2.

At the authors' discretion, part of the data tables (5, 6, 7) may be removed from the article or shortened, and instead a web address may be published where the complete data from the experiment is viewed.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language of the paper are easy to understand.  But for example, on 22 row is used "co-cooperative user' working" and it must be "co-cooperative users' working"; on 35 row require – requires; on 68 row be contributed for – contributed to; on 73 row of solutions of - of solutions to…

Author Response

Dear Editor of Future Internet Journal

The authors of the manuscript would like to thank the Future Internet’s editorial office members as well as the reviewers for their valued comments and feedback which enriched the manuscript. We have revised our manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. Below are our detailed responses to the received comments. Please note that the comments of the reviewers are colored black, while the authors’ responses are colored red. Moreover, the modified or added parts to the manuscript are colored red, except the language corrections which have been corrected and kept written in black color.

 

Best regards

Yaarob Al-Nidawi

 

Reviewer-2:

Point 2 contains only one paragraph and is very difficult to read (pp. 3 and 4). It demonstrates the authors' deep knowledge of the domain and the contribution of their approach. In my opinion, individual studies should be grouped according to some principle and presented in separate paragraphs. For example, by their goals, such as reducing costs, peak-power-consumption or carbon-emissions, or by the approach/ algorithm used in them. In this way, point 2’s volume can also be shortened, and the authors will have the more volume to clarify the data shown in the other chapters.

 

Thank you for your comments on improving our manuscript and we appreciate your effort. We have divided this section of the related works based on number of users considered in the current state of arts.

 

 

Point 7 proves the contribution of the approach compared to existing approaches to date. Therefore, I believe that although nota one created by the authors of the manuscript, the approach of Setlhaolo and Xia can be described in more detail to highlight the novelty and the contribution of the authors' approach. This can be done at point 7 or at point 2.

 

Thank you for this point. According to your comment, the work Setlhaolo and Xia is described in more details in section 2.

 

At the authors' discretion, part of the data tables (5, 6, 7) may be removed from the manuscript or shortened, and instead a web address may be published where the complete data from the experiment is viewed.

Thank you for your comment to highlight this point. We have addressed your concern by adding an appendix (A) that includes the aforementioned tables (Tables 5, 6, and 7). We have included the tables in the manuscript as appendix since they include important results that may be needed for the reader to get insight more details.

 

 

The language of the paper are easy to understand. But for example, on 22 row is used "co-cooperative user' working" and it must be "co-cooperative users' working"; on 35 row require –requires; on 68 row be contributed for – contributed to; on 73 row of solutions of - of solutions to.

Thank you for this comment and your valuable effort to address this issue. Regarding the word (co-cooperative), it has been addressed also by the first reviewer and it has been unified all across the manuscript to be written as (cooperative). We have also revised the manuscript to consider your concern regarding the English language mistakes and the paper has been corrected accordingly.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article focuses on the use of methods aimed at balancing the load between the required power demand and the available generating capacity in Smart Grid networks. The subject of the article is current and relevant from the point of view of today's applications of engineering solutions in everyday life. The introduction provides sufficient background and contains all the relevant references. The authors cited a number of works describing the methods used so far for load scheduling in order to optimize energy consumption and save costs. They described them in detail and also presented their shortcomings. They proposed a method that eliminates the shortcomings of the methods described in the literature, describing in detail different scenarios of the conducted research. The authors proposed mathematical models for scheduling multi-user load, user inconvenience and peak load, describing them with appropriate relationships. Next, they focused on presenting the load scheduling model, using the Hummingbird Optimization Algorithm (AHA) and its extension MAHA. Next, the authors used MEREC, VIKOR methods to optimize the model. The authors also presented many pricing schemes in the paper, namely Time of Use (ToU) pricing scheme and Adaptive Level of Usage (ACLPS) pricing scheme, to test the proposed system at different pricing rates. Hence, I believe that the theoretical and experimental parts are well explained. The presented models, schemes, algorithms and figures are well explained, discussed and represent the work done by the authors. All the formulas are well written and discussed in detail in the paper. The research results and experiments conducted are supported by correct conclusions and analyses. The authors conducted a series of experimental studies for different scenarios, the results of which showed the validity and feasibility of the presented method. The method of conducting the research is described in great detail, supported by relevant relationships and results presented in tables for different variants. Moreover, the results of the proposed method are verified using other techniques of recently published works in the literature to emphasize the importance of the proposed model in relation to the customer. The conclusions are specific and well describe what has been done and what results have been achieved. The subject of the article fits the scope of the journal. It is also very important from the point of view of the possibility of using the method described by the authors in everyday life, for household users to manage energy, which I consider a great advantage from the point of view of the research topic itself and the practical use of the method in engineering solutions of everyday life. The structure of the article is clear. The state of the art has been properly investigated. I have only minor changes listed below.

Minor changes:

Page 2, Lines 50 - 51 The grammar of the sentence should be corrected.

Page 3, Line 107 Unnecessary dot.

Page 3, Line 137 Unnecessary empty space.

Page 5, Line 213 I suggest using spaces before and after all formulas.

Author Response

Dear Editor of Future Internet Journal

The authors of the manuscript would like to thank the Future Internet’s editorial office members as well as the reviewers for their valued comments and feedback which enriched the manuscript. We have revised our manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. Below are our detailed responses to the received comments. Please note that the comments of the reviewers are colored black, while the authors’ responses are colored red. Moreover, the modified or added parts to the manuscript are colored red, except the language corrections which have been corrected and kept written in black color.

 

Best regards

Yaarob Al-Nidawi

 

Reviewer-3:

 

The manuscript focuses on the use of methods aimed at balancing the load between the required power demand and the available generating capacity in Smart Grid networks. The subject of the manuscript is current and relevant from the point of view of today's applications of engineering solutions in everyday life. The introduction provides sufficient background and contains all the relevant references. The authors cited a number of works describing the methods used so far for load scheduling in order to optimize energy consumption and save costs. They described the min detail and also presented their shortcomings. They proposed a method that eliminates the shortcomings of the methods described in the literature, describing in detail different scenarios of the conducted research. The authors proposed mathematical models for scheduling multi-user load, user inconvenience and peak load, describing them with appropriate relationships. Next, they focused on presenting the load scheduling model, using the Humming bird Optimization Algorithm (AHA) and its extension MAHA. Next, the authors used MEREC, VIKOR methods to optimize the model. The authors also presented many pricing schemes in the paper, namely Time of Use (ToU) pricing scheme and Adaptive Level of Usage (ACLPS) pricing scheme, to test the proposed system at different pricing rates. Hence, I believe that the theoretical and experimental parts are well explained. The presented models, schemes, algorithms and figures are well explained, discussed and represent the work done by the authors. All the formulas are well written and discussed in detail in the paper. The research results and experiments conducted are supported by correct conclusions and analyses. The authors conducted a series of experimental studies for different scenarios, the results of which showed the validity and feasibility of the presented method. The method of conducting the research is described in great detail, supported by relevant relationships and results presented in tables for different variants. Moreover, the results of the proposed method are verified using other techniques of recently published works in the literature to emphasize the importance of the proposed model in relation to the customer. The conclusions are specific and well describe what has been done and what results have been achieved. The subject of the manuscript fits the scope of the journal. It is also very important from the point of view of the possibility of using the method described by the authors in everyday life, for household users to manage energy, which I consider a great advantage from the point of view of the research topic itself and the practical use of the method in engineering solutions of everyday life. The structure of the manuscript is clear. The state of the art has been properly investigated. I have only minor changes listed below.

Thank you for your positive feedback and comprehensive understanding, we appreciate the time you have given in reviewing our manuscript and improving it.

Minor changes:

Page 2, Lines 50 - 51 The grammar of the sentence should be corrected.

Thank you for your comment on improving our manuscript. We have revised the manuscript to consider your comment for the English language mistakes.

Page 3, Line 107 Unnecessary dot.

Thank you for this comment, we have removed it.

Page 3, Line 137 Unnecessary empty space.

Thank you for this point, we have removed it.

Page 5, Line 213 I suggest using spaces before and after all formulas.

Thank you for this note, according to your comment we added spaces before and after each formula. 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to thank the authors for addressing my previous comments. Overall, the quality of the paper has improved. Here are some minor issues that need to be addressed:

Section 2 is divided into two subsections, which show better organization. However, the texts inside these two subsections are still written as two long paragraphs, which makes them hard to follow. Please divide them into logically organized paragraphs or further divide them into groups based on some criteria. 

Future work needs to be more elaborate rather than just listing a couple of terms. Please, provide the motivation either by mentioning the limitation of the proposed work in this paper or as an extension of ideas.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The newly added future work sentence is grammatically incorrect and needs correction.

Author Response

Dear Editor of Future Internet Journal

The authors of the manuscript would like to thank the Future Internet’s editorial office members as well as the first reviewer for his valued comments and feedback which enriched the manuscript. We have revised our manuscript according to the comments. Below are our detailed responses to the received comments. Please note that the comments of the reviewer are colored black, while the authors’ responses are colored red. Moreover, the modified or added parts to the manuscript are colored red, except the language corrections which have been corrected and kept written in black color.

Best regards

 

Reviewer-1:

(Section 2 is divided into two subsections, which show better organization. However, the texts inside these two subsections are still written as two long paragraphs, which makes them hard to follow. Please divide them into logically organized paragraphs or further divide them into groups based on some criteria.)

The authors would like to express their deepest appreciation for the valuable support in the process of revision and the helpful comments and suggestions. Regarding section 2, it has been amended according to the recommendation of the reviewer where all long paragraphs have been divided into small sentences.

 

 

(Future work needs to be more elaborate rather than just listing a couple of terms. Please, provide the motivation either by mentioning the limitation of the proposed work in this paper or as an extension of ideas.)

Thanks again for these helpful comments. The future work statement has been expanded in the Conclusion section and has been re-written again as indicated in the red color.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx