Patent ID: 8346401

Claim:
A method for managing electric resources via a smart charging benefit analysis, comprising the steps: determining a smart charging benefit, wherein the smart charging benefit is a benefit provided by an energy management system, wherein the energy management system manages a plurality of electric resources, wherein the smart charging benefit is a beneficial impact resulting from the energy management system, wherein the beneficial impact is beneficial to at least one of the plurality of electric resources, wherein the step of determining the smart charging benefit comprises: determining a baseline energy flow value, wherein the baseline energy flow value is a regular energy flow to the at least one of the plurality of electric resources, wherein the regular energy flow is energy flow without the smart charging benefit, wherein the regular energy flow is based on energy flow information provided by the at least one of the plurality of electric resources; determining a plurality of managed energy flow values for the at least one of the plurality of electric resources; comparing each of the plurality of managed energy flow values with the baseline energy flow value; determining a potential beneficial impact for each of the plurality of managed energy flow values, wherein the potential beneficial impact is a beneficial impact potentially resulting from the energy management system that is potentially beneficial to the at least one of the plurality of electric resources based on at least one of the plurality of managed energy flow values; wherein the beneficial impact is selected from a group consisting of the following: a load curve modification, a peak power demand reduction, or a controllable load regulation amount; and, selecting one of the potential beneficial impacts, wherein the smart charging benefit is the selected potential beneficial impact; transmitting a benefit representation from a server to the at least one of the plurality of electric resources, wherein the benefit representation represents the smart charging benefit; and, managing charging behavior of the plurality of electric resources based partially on the smart charging benefit, wherein the step of managing the charging behavior is performed on at least one particular machine, said at least one particular machine comprising at least one physical computing device.