Peak Demand Management

For customers consuming large amounts of power, a large portion of the electricity bill is based on peak demand. This refers to the highest amount of electricity a customer uses during a specified interval, usually 15 minutes. For facilities with many motors, fans, lights, heaters, computers, air conditioners, compressors and various types of machinery this can be quite substantial. With these devices being used on random and uncontrolled intervals, power distribution can become uneven. This will result in excessive and unnecessary charges on the electricity bill.

Peak demand management, also known as demand side management, will not decrease the total amount of power used, but rather smooth the usage curve as to lessen the strain on power production systems. As such, there is size of infrastructure needed with power plants and power distribution. With uneven power consumption, there will be a large amount of unneeded and wasted infrastructure in place. In certain jurisdictions, there exist peaking power plants which are only used during times of excessive demand. These plants generally burn natural gas, diesel fuel or petroleum based products and are generally less efficient than baseline power plants.

One way to reduce the usage of these power plants is to minimize the peak demand. This can be done manually or with a control system. EG Energy Controls has a system which can handle this task. The DemandMiser is an industrial grade Maximum Demand Controller with intelligent load shedding abilities. It features fully customizable load limits as well as notifications and alerts for data management. Not only will it conserve energy and money, but will be able to quantify the benefits exactly and in any way imaginable. Graphically, numerically; the DemandMiser does it all. If you need any kind of information on this article related topic click here: Utilities Management