Patent Document ID: 4583182
Application ID: 06539814
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. In a device control system having a plurality of resource consuming devices which are connected to and controlled by said device control system, a method of controlling the operation of said devices to maintain the overall demand for the resources below a predetermined demand threshold comprising: periodically monitoring the load presenting by the active ones of said devices to obtain an indication of the actual load for each of a number of successive time intervals; storing n consecutive ones of said periodic indications; generating a plurality of data each representing the predicted load for one of a plurality of successive future ones of said time intervals; creating n sets of data by populating the first of said n sets of data with said n periodic indications and by populating each successive set with the data from the previous set modified by having the oldest one of said n periodic indications from the previous set being replaced with the one of said data representative of the next successive future time interval not contained in said previous set; weighing each of said n sets of data according to customer defined weight factors; comparing each of said weighed sets of data against a set of predetermined criteria representative of said predetermined demand threshold; and regulating the operating of said resource consuming devices based on the result of said comparison.