Consumer demand profile management through Demand side load management: a review

Demand side management is an intervention by the consumer or utility, to effect changes in demand profile for the grid or a cluster of consumers. The load profile management is usually done to bring down the peak demand for the period (usually a daily peak demand). This is done through voluntary participation of consumer. Demand side management is an important tool available to consumers to take advantage of differential tariffs in force now-a-days. The utilities are equally or more benefited by the DSM implementations for its advantages including improvement in overall efficiency, reliability and reducing denial of service. This work presents the basics concepts of DSM and discusses select DSM implementations, reported by various authors. This work discusses various architectures useful in DSM implementations.