I. Introduction
ELECTRIC power utilities are facing with very expensive infrastructure investments due to the continually increasing demand for electricity. Power utilities are also faced with an increasing awareness of environmental conditions. Demand side management (DSM) refers to initiatives that can be implemented by electric power utilities to encourage customers to adopt energy efficient practices. Implementing DSM is beneficial to both utilities and customers in that it can improve energy efficiency, system reliability and secu-rity’ reduce capital and operating costs, transmission network congestion, environmental damage and customer cost [1]–[6]. DSM programs are therefore, very important and practical in helping electric power utilities to meet the challenges ahead.