With the emerging of smart grids as an answer to the need of sustainability, it grows in relevance the ability to manage the energy at our disposal. This is of utmost importance in residential settings where the demand is dependant on the family behaviors and the possibility of having other distributed energy sources (i.e. Solar Panels, Plug-In Electric Vehicles). Reliable energy Management Systems help in this task by scheduling the appliances in order to optimize a specific aspect of the energy demand. This thesis studies the effect of different optimization approaches for the power scheduling problem in residential settings. We start from a Mixed-Integer Linear Program as a base and build an heuristic approach based on the Tabu Search algorithm, improved with an expanding neighborhood.