Florida Power Corporation's load management system

An overview is given of the load management system started by Florida Power Corporation (FPC) in 1981 to defer 825 MW of additional peaking capacity needed by January of 1995. It is a volunteer program with over 260000 residential customers presently participating and 40000 customers being added each year. These customers allow FPC to interrupt selected appliances in return for a credit on their electric bills. The load management controller consists of dual-redundant HP-1000 computers, each with a dedicated terminal and keyboard, 20 Mbyte hard disk, and 5.25 in floppy disk drive. They run identical software and are loaded with the same database. The load management database resides on the corporate mainframe computer. FPC is in the initial phases of specifying a new controller that will be able to communicate with the Energy Control Center computer system. An expert system in the new controller will be able to develop strategies on short notice to conform to changing operating conditions.<>