Load Management - A Better Way

Ohio Edison Company serves about 800,000 customers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, making it one of the 20 largest electric utilities in the nation. The 'cost of service' concept has been basic to rate design throughout the history of the company, and is evident today as the demand related charges have escalated in recent rate cases reflecting the higher costs of installing new generating facilities at today's high construction and financing costs. \n\nThis paper will describe one of the many applications of load management techniques which has enabled the company to shift well over 100,000 kilowatts of customer load from the on-peak period to the off-peak period in the last four to five years. This is helping delay the need for new plants and allows existing plants to be more fully utilized, resulting in lower costs to customers who use their electric service wisely and possibly lower rate increases in the future than would have been required otherwise.