In this study, a novel framework is proposed for efficient energy management of residential buildings to reduce the electricity bill, alleviate peak-to-average ratio (PAR), and acquire the desired trade-off between the electricity bill and user-discomfort in the smart grid. The proposed framework is an integrated framework of artificial neural network (ANN) based forecast engine and our proposed day-ahead grey wolf modified enhanced differential evolution algorithm (DA-GmEDE) based home energy management controller (HEMC). The forecast engine forecasts price-based demand response (DR) signal and energy consumption patterns and HEMC schedules smart home appliances under the forecasted pricing signal and energy consumption pattern for efficient energy management. The proposed DA-GmEDE based strategy is compared with two benchmark strategies: day-ahead genetic algorithm (DA-GA) based strategy, and dayahead game-theory (DA-game-theoretic) based strategy for performance validation. Moreover, extensive simulations are conducted to test the effectiveness and productiveness of the proposed DA-GmEDE based strategy for efficient energy management. The results and discussion illustrate that the proposed DA-GmEDE strategy outperforms the benchmark strategies by 33.3% in terms of efficient energy management. INDEX TERMS Advanced metering infrastructure, artificial neural networks, demand response, energy management, grey wolf modified enhanced differential evolution algorithm, smart grid. NOMENCLATURE SG Smart grid ANN Artificial neural network HEMS Home energy management system MILP Mixed integer linear programming BBSA Binary backtracking search algorithm The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo .