Patent ID: 7379997

Claim:
A method for managing demand for a commodity provided by a utility company, the utility company delivering the commodity to a plurality of customer sites, the customer sites each having a plurality of devices which use the commodity, including the steps of: providing a plurality of nodes, each node being associated with a corresponding device of the plurality of devices at the customer site; defining an energy management program at the utility company having a subset of the plurality of devices for which usage of the commodity may be managed by activating the energy management program; measuring, by each associated node, the instantaneous rate at which the commodity is being delivered to the associated device, receiving at the utility company in real time, the instantaneous rate at which the commodity is being delivered to each of the devices; determining at the utility company, in real time, a capacity of the commodity that can be managed by the utility company by activating the energy management program, the capacity being determined by the instantaneous rate at which the commodity is being delivered to the subset of the plurality of devices; selectively activating the energy management program at the utility company to manage the usage of the commodity by the subset of devices; and determining an actual consumption of the commodity at each device of the plurality of devices at the customer site following activation of the program such that the utility company can verify, in real time, management of the commodity usage for each device of the plurality of devices at the customer site following activation of the program.