Demand ratchets: https://sam.nrel.gov/forum/forum-general/1164

Topic on old forum not on Wayback Machine: https://sam.nrel.gov/node/75891

Australia kVA with rolling capacity demand charges: https://sam.nrel.gov/forum/forum-general/1341

From Owen Z 5/11/2021:

Demand Ratchets / Minimum Billing Demands – These are already ubiquitous among commercial and industrial customers, but not currently represented in SAM (although you can sometimes calculate a workaround using the minimum bill function, but not in a super streamlined manner). If I define “Billing Demand” as the amount of kW that are billed (and thus gets multiplied by the demand charge), these are usually not as simple as just the peak 15- or 30-minute demand during the month. Usually, they are specified as something like this:

The Billing Demand shall be the highest of the following:
(a) Actual maximum demand measured during the month
(b) 75% percent of maximum demand over the previous 12 months
(c) 30 kW

This is just an example, but you get the point. Option (b) is referred to as a Demand Ratchet, and it’s a way to make sure that distribution utilities recover their costs! There are some more nuances to this whole area, but this is the general gist.