The article investigates the methods of power consumption control. It is shown that the power shortage during peak hours makes it difficult to maintain a balance between generation and consumption capacity, which leads to the need to introduce restrictions on the electrical load of industrial consumers and the development of methods and tools to control power consumption. The need to manage energy consumption is due to a number of reasons, including: 1) the significant difference between peak load and night failure in power systems; 2) insufficient regulatory capacity of thermal power plants and nuclear power plants to cover the variable part of load schedules; 3) unfavorable tendency to reduce the share of shunting capacity in power systems caused by the consolidation of power units; 4) significant capital and energy costs associated with the construction and operation of peak units; 5) technical feasibility and economic feasibility of artificial alignment of load schedules. It is shown that the following methods of power consumption control are currently known: instantaneous rate; at the ideal norm; management on the forecast value; control with the use of average power on a moving time interval (moving window method) and combined methods that use different combinations, as well as the distribution of control influence between consumers - regulators (resource allocation method). It is better to consider such a control method that provides for a larger number of managed consumers random time distribution of possible short-term emissions, their minimum absolute value, as well as more complete use by the consumer of the declared capacity or allocated power and energy limits. According to these criteria, the listed management methods are compared. Moreover, the method of instantaneous rate is implemented in control or automatic control using a signal proportional to the average power for 1, 2 or 3 minutes, the method of the ideal norm involves measuring the average power of the consumer for short periods of time (up to three minutes) and comparing this value with the declared ( or limit) power, control with prediction is that the control signal is formed as the difference between the amount of possible power and predicted at the end of the control cycle. To increase the efficiency of power consumption management, a combined control method is proposed, which is a synthesis of two known methods - control at the ideal norm and control over the predicted value of power consumption, which combines the advantages of both methods. The condition of management is maintenance of such mode of power consumption at which the set capacity is not exceeded and its set value is used as much as possible. Fulfillment of this condition is provided by working off of the restrictions set to each step of management. Due to the fact that different control steps have different control reactions to the real process, appropriate control methods are used for different steps. In the first steps, when there is enough time to adopt the optimal control effect and it can be adjusted, the control is based on the forecast value of electricity consumption, in the last steps, which have special responsibility for the control process; control is carried out by the ideal norm. Thus, this method combines the advantages of forecast management (control effect is justified) and the method of management at the ideal norm (in the last step of management, which allows optimal use of the remaining power limit and not exceed the specified value) with a priori justified order of consumers-regulators.