Patent ID: 7373222

Claim:
A decentralized energy control and management system, comprising: a plurality of loads associated with a system, wherein at least one subset of the plurality of loads is a member of a class, wherein members of the class are assigned to the class based upon a requirement that all members of the class must be connected to or shed from an energy supply in unison; a plurality of networked load controllers associated with respective loads, wherein the load controllers cooperate to determine which load should be shed when the total system demand exceeds an optimum limit; and a master controller that polls the plurality of networked load controllers to determine which loads are not connected to a power supply and are thereby inactive, determines load priorities associated with the inactive loads, finds the highest priority load among the inactive loads; determines whether the highest priority load is a member of a class, and connects all members of the class to which the highest priority load is a member to the power supply if connecting the entire class would not bring total system demand above an optimum level, wherein total system demand is the total energy demand for all loads connected to the energy supply.