Minimum waiting time scheduling of power supply assignation to variable rate requests

The paper deals with a novel scheduling strategy for the assignation of a power resource. More precisely, a set of tasks, characterized by power requests with variable power rate, such as in the domestic electric appliances, is considered and the strategy aims at minimizing the average waiting time. The main result is that to determine the assignation strategy only the information on the maximum needed power and on the duration of the tasks is required. During the implementation of the strategy, the scheduler needs to periodically obtain, from the appliances, information on the maximum power needed to complete the task. In the case of two tasks, the strategy is shown, both analytically and with simulations, to perform better than a non-interruptible strategy.