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The electric utility industry is coping with significant changes brought on by deregulation, industry restructuring, consumer choice, and increasing costs of net generation capacity. The advent of independent power producers and access to transmission systems owned and operated by utilities adds complexity to these issues. A primary concern is matching consumer loads with capacity to supply energy in an economical and reliable manner. In recent years, net generating capacity has declined 40% while net energy consumption has increased by more than 50%. Without new generating capacity being added to match load growth, other means have to be developed to reduce peak demands in order to maintain an adequate ratio between capacity and demand. An important technology to facilitate this is electric load management — managing consumer loads, and ultimately system loads, by various strategies and techniques. This book provides a general knowledge of demand control and energy conservation generically referred to as electric load management.
