Does anyone know how this works ( on inspection right now)

Ran across this on demand electric panel. Anyone know how it worksBrand is Demand Miser. Has a high demand light with a demand set knob that goes from 0-30 and has a digital reading in kilowatts. Is this tied into the electric company? Couldn’t post a photo from my phone

Bobby, try Paul Abernathy.
Call him.

I’m *sure *it’s tied to the electric company. I’ve seen similar.

From there site; Demand Miser.

                                                                                          **Peak Demand Management**

                                                                       **Load shedding** is a means of reducing demand usage in  a facility and will reducing energy usage by up to 20%. Many times  demand charges exceed 50% of the total electric power bill. This makes  load shedding a very attractive option to reduce operating costs.

What is Demand Usage?

Demand usage is the total amount of electricity being used by a consumer during a defined time period.

Demand varies from hour to hour, day to day and season to season. This usage that is expressed in kilowatts (not kilowatt-hours) and is called the demand peak on the system.

The utility records demand over a 15-minute time period. The company is charged for the highest 15-minute usage recorded on the demand meter. **After the utility reads the meter each month, demand is reset to zero ** and the meter starts over, recording the highest 15-minute usage for the next billing period. You will see this charge on your power bill.

Thanks for your help earlier Chris.
Here’s a pick of what we’re talking about:

years ago when I was wiring all electric heat homes (late 70’s early 80’s). All the heating circuits and the water heater circuit would be fed through a demand control panel. This was basically a switching panel that would limit the amount of power allowed through. It was accomplished by alternately shutting off certain circuits and cycling through all of them.

Not sure how much help I was. Hopefully gave you an idea of what you had.

That looks like an in-house control panel not tied to electric company, even though it serves the same purpose, saving electricity.

I see these all the time. The newer ones are pretty high tech. Customer can save some real money if they play the electric companies game on usage. They should ask about it when they sign up for service.

It looks like the high tech version of what we have here, the FPL management system.

We call them load shedders up here.

Ran into an old unit from the 50-60’s last weekend. It was on a 60 amps service serving an apartment that had electric stove, DHW tank, washer/dryer, In this case, the stove had priority; it would '“shed” the dryer when the stove draw + other draw got to a preset amperage. The mechanism was a coil that operated a mercury switch.

Ran into a number of them a year ago in a smaller multi-unit. There were a couple of young “in training” electricians on-site measuring up the place for a re-wire while I inspected the rest of it. I showed them the units that were internal to the panels…they didn’t know what they were.