Today’s emerging solutions involve technology such as smart panels that shed load via disconnecting circuits, which can cause nuisance tripping and may even damage large inductive loads. Instead, we propose the integration of a controller that signals flexible loads to curtail when the net load approaches panel capacity. We explore control algorithms that incorporate price-based and event-based signaling. This paper also documents the development of a bench-scale test bed, which we use to test load-management algorithms and explore the effects of real-world issues such as communications latency. Our experimental results suggest the viability of a hybrid price and event-based load management algorithm and recommend the algorithm for further testing in a building-scale test bed.