Load-management applications for the industrial sector

The goal of any load-management program is to maintain, as nearly as possib le, a constant level of load, thereby allowing the system load factor to ap proach 100%. The important benefits of load management are reduction in max imum demand, reduction in power loss, better equipment utilisation and savi ng through reduced maximum demand charges. Load shifting, one of the simple st methods of load management, is to reduce customer demand during the peak period by shifting the use of appliances and equipment to partial peak and off-peak periods. Here no loads are being switched off, but only shifted o r rescheduled, and hence the total production is not affected. In this pape r, a fully fledged program is developed for load shifting and the same has been tried with the actual load data collected from a typical fertiliser an d chemical industry plant. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserv ed.