Patent ID: 8335596

Claim:
A method performed by a server device, the method comprising: receiving, by the server device and from a device gateway server, network content that includes information regarding a quantity of power consumed by each of a plurality of smart grid devices, the network content being received via a tunneling protocol that permits the server device to receive the network content at a location that is remote from the device gateway server; retrieving, from a memory associated with the server device, control policies that include a threshold associated with another quantity of power consumed by the plurality of smart grid devices or a plurality of device thresholds associated with the plurality of smart grid devices, each device threshold, of the plurality of device thresholds, corresponding to a quantity of power consumed by a different one of the plurality of smart grid devices; determining, by the server device, whether a device condition exists based on a comparison of the each device threshold with the quantity of power consumed by the different one of the plurality of smart grid devices; sending, by the server device and to a user device, a notification that the device condition exists when the quantity of power consumed by a particular smart grid device, of the plurality of smart grid devices, is greater than a particular device threshold, of the plurality of device thresholds, that corresponds to the particular smart grid device; determining, by the server device, whether a curtailment condition exists based on a comparison of the other quantity of power consumed by the plurality of smart grid devices and the threshold; and sending, by the server device and to the user device, another notification indicating that a curtailment condition exists when the other quantity of power consumed by the plurality of the smart grid devices is greater than the threshold, wherein sending the other notification includes: generating a query to determine a quantity of unforced capacity, associated with at least one smart grid device, of the plurality of smart grid devices, which is available to be used during a curtailment operation; sending, to the at least one smart grid device and via the device gateway server, the query to obtain the quantity of unforced capacity; and sending an instruction to one or more smart grid devices, of the plurality of smart grid devices, to perform the curtailment operation based on the quantity of unforced capacity obtained from the at least one smart grid device in response to the query.