The process of structuring and/or scheduling the use of energy among a group of customers to best match available supplies to available demand.

Load management is standard practice for most large municipal utilities and is considered essential for stable energy service in most industrial regions. It consists of three basic strategies: peak clipping (the reduction of peak energy use, or literally "clipping the peak" off of an energy use curve), peak shifting (assisting customers in changing their peak demand periods so that demand better matches available supplies) and valley filling (encouraging the shifting of energy use in peak periods to the same use in periods when energy use is typically lowest).

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