Review of developed demand side management programs including different concepts and their results

Demand side management (DSM) frames different concepts with the objective of enhancing the efficiency across the whole energy productive cycle. In DSM three concepts can be clearly identified: energy efficiency (EE), energy conservation (EC) and demand response (DR). Although they have some particularities, these are complementary concepts and in some cases, not well design DSM programs, may enter in conflict between each other. The goal of this paper is to present the relevance of integrating these three concepts to improve the efficiency in the energy productive cycle. The involvement and accomplishment of those programs improves their effectiveness and bring benefits for all the actors involved in the energy scenario within a liberalized market. In order to achieve such a goal, the present paper presents the way in which these programs are being developed in the DSM leading countries (i.e. Europe, Japan, USA), and the current state of the DSM initiatives in some Latin American countries is reviewed as well. This paper describes the DSM programs designed and implemented in the study case countries, results obtained, and provides relevant conclusions. As result of this analysis it is observed that the DSM programs are more effective when including all EE, EC and DR concepts and how their foundation is a strong political commitment permitting to reduce significantly the energy consumption in the countries included in the study.