From a consumption of approximately 100 MWh per year of electricity or 500 MWh of heat, energy suppliers create so-called load profiles. In these, the power to be provided for the respective metering point is recorded in table form at quarter-hourly intervals. The entire energy market functions in this 15-minute cycle. In this way, short-, medium- and long-term forecasts can be generated from the accumulated load profiles and used to control power plants and the import and export of energy.
Deviations from these cumulative schedules are handled via the balancing energy market. A surplus of energy is just as much a problem as a shortfall, since energy can only be stored with great difficulty.
If there is too much energy in the grid, it is usually supplied free of charge; however, if there is too little energy, power plants that are available at short notice and therefore expensive and not very environmentally friendly have to be ramped up, so that the electricity price can rise to several euros per kWh.
Deviations from the load curves are therefore really expensive for the utilities. Companies with such load peaks must therefore make malus payments to the energy supply company. Malus payments are avoidable because they are usually caused by large loads such as commercial kitchen equipment, cold rooms, ovens, etc.
Passive load management measures the current load via sensors in the building control system and warns of overloads. The technology uses data from the control system, is cost-effective and requires quick reactions from the staff.
Active load management works similarly to active control technology and can both prevent loads from being switched on and actively take other, previously defined loads off the grid or draw on buffers such as electricity storage. This technique can be implemented at a significantly higher cost and is usually only considered after the first malus payment.
Demand response, the switching on and off of large loads as specified by the utility, goes one step further. Inertial processes such as heating, cooling or air conditioning are ideal for this purpose, where delays of 15 minutes to several hours are of no consequence. The sizes required for this are in the MW range and result in bonus payments from the utility.
The totality of these possibilities holds energy efficiency potentials of up to 10 percent.