Interruptible load management is an important component of demand side management in electricity market. It has deep influences on the reliable and economical operation of power system. Interruptible load management aims at enhancing the elasticity of users to relieve or eliminate the strain on peak load hours. The electricity power company should to sign a contract in advance with the user, appointing that operator can be issued interrupt request to the users during the peak load. After receipt of the response, the power company can interrupt the power supply accordng to the contract, and give the users some certain compensation. By the economic incentive to implement demand side management, interrupt load management is a market approach that completely conforms to the equity principle and objective economic requirement. The implementation of the ILM can greatly improve the elasticity of demand of the users, optimizing load curve, alleviate the situation of insufficient power supply at peak, which significantly reduce peak electricity price. At the same time, in the actual operation of electricity market process, capacity shortage would be appear frequently because of load forecast deviation. Then the electric power company can not only through the spot market to buy some electricity, also through the interruptible load to avoid the risk of higher electricity market prices. This way can greatly guarantee economic interests for the electric power company. As a kind of "electric resource", interruptible load can be invoked at the emergency state. As a kind of operating reserve capacity, interruptible load can participate in auxiliary service system, greatly improving the safety and reliability of the system. In addition, the interruptible load can also be used in the line of congestion management, in order to reduce constructing new transmission lines or buy high electricity cost of congestion management. In this paper, an overview of applications of interruptible load in shifting load, reserving market service, and congestion management are researched. Some feasible research directions are concluded for interruptible load management and the obstacles of conception, equipment and mechanism of interruptible load management are presented. Lastly, some suggestions are given to overcome these difficulties.
