SPECIAL SECTION ON EVOLVING TECHNOLOGIES IN ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS Received August 8, 2020, accepted August 19, 2020, date of publication August 27, 2020, date of current version September 11, 2020. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3020027 Towards Energy Efficient Smart Grids Using Bio-Inspired Scheduling Techniques ZUNAIRA AMJAD 1 , MUNAM ALI SHAH 1 , CARSTEN MAPLE 2 , (Member, IEEE), HASAN ALI KHATTAK 1,3 , (Senior Member, IEEE), ZOOBIA AMEER 4 , MUHAMMAD NABEEL ASGHAR 5 , AND SHAFAQ MUSSADIQ 6 1 Department of Computer Science, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45000, Pakistan 2 WMG Cyber Security Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K. 3 Department of Computing, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad 44000, Pakistan 4 Department of Physics, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University, Peshawar 25000, Pakistan 5 Department of Computer Science, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan 60000, Pakistan 6 Institute of Information Technology, Kohat University of Science and Technology, Kohat 26000, Pakistan Corresponding author: Hasan Ali Khattak (hasan.alikhattak@seecs.edu.pk) This work was supported by The Alan Turing Institute under Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant EP/N510129/1. ABSTRACT Electric power grids are lagging in flexibility and time-response. A smart grid is an improved version of electrical grids that leverages Internet of Things (IoT) based devices to improve the overall infrastructure from the grid stations to intelligent appliances. It provides better understanding of supply and demand and overall flow of data depending based upon the requirements. Modern approach towards Smart grid envisions to provide electricity consumers with the opportunity to manage their respective power usage. Population increase has played a major role in the adoption of smart grid as a lot of electrical energy is consumed in the residential sector and a lot of architectures have been proposed for better flow of information from the smart meter to connectors and devices for improved customer participation. Customer needs have been very important in the smart grid. However, the customers have never been provided with the ease of choosing their own kind of benefits from the smart grid. In this work, we propose an enhanced architecture working effectively for multiple users based on their requirements. The users would be able to choose their type of scheduling techniques based on their requirements. These requirements may include cost reduction and increasing user comfort for better consumption of electricity and reliable systems. These requirements can be achieved using different Bio inspired computing based scheduling algorithms. Furthermore, in this work, we provide a comparison of these bio inspired scheduling techniques, i.e., Enhanced Differential Evolution, Bacterial Foraging Algorithm and Grey Wolf Optimization integrated in smart grid architecture for providing better consumption of electricity and achieving reliable systems. These algorithms mainly aim to schedule load, minimize electricity bills and maximize the user comfort depending on user demand. INDEX TERMS Smart grids, smart cities, smart grid architecture, heuristic techniques, scheduling algorithms, energy efficiency. I. INTRODUCTION An increase in the demand for electrical energy by com- mercial, industrial and residential customers, power frame- works has been witnessed. The requirement for incorporating sustainable energy sources into the present grid has been observed. This has been impacted due to environmental con- servation and preservation, difficulties of expanding energy tariffs and the requirement for a more satisfactory power The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Sanjeevikumar Padmanaban . framework. All of these combined are among the variables that have been required for expanded research in the academia and industry with respect to the change of traditional grids to smart grid. This smart grid is likewise called future grid, intelligent power frameworks or energy web [1]. In contrast, the conventional grid is a unified grid and is portrayed by one directional flow of information and mostly energy having basic architecture and irrelevant security risks The utility supplier is exclusively incharge of the overall Power Generation. Distribution and Transmission of the elec- trical energy process incorporates all operations, control and VOLUME 8, 2020 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 158947