With the trend of increasing smart appliances used in homes

their electricity consumption scheduling is becoming an important research area of the demand side management. By dividing a day into slots

representing the starting time

the operation length and electricity consumption with these slots while referring to electricity consumption characteristics and the pricing mechanism

an intelligent electricity consumption optimization approach is proposed to minimize the electricity consumption fee. The approach considers such constraints as the allowed earliest starting instant

the latest ending instant and maximum interruption times at the same time. Simulation results show that the method proposed is effective in reducing the electricity consumption fee and the load peak

especially the more appreciable reduction in the spot price mechanism and with flexible interruption times of smart appliances. This work is supported by State Grid Corporation of China(No. SGTYHT/14-JS-188).