Electrical peak load demand all over the world is always anticipated to grow, which is challenging electrical utility to supply such increasing load demand in a cost effective, reliable and sustainable manner. Thus, there is a need to study some of load management (LM) techniques employed to minimize energy consumption, reduce consumers' electricity bills and decrease the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. This paper presents a review of several recent LM strategies and optimization algorithms in different domains. The review is complemented by tabulating several demand side management (DSM) techniques with a specific view on the used demand response (DR) programs, key finding and benefits gained. A special focus is directed to the communication protocols and wireless technology, incorporation of renewable energy resources (RERs), battery energy storage (BES), home appliances scheduling and power quality applications. The outcome of this review reveals that the real time pricing (RTP) is the most efficient price-based mechanism program (PBP), whilst time of use (TOU) is the basic PBP and easiest to implement. Energy efficiency programs have proved the highest influential impact on the annual energy saving over the other dynamic pricing mechanism programs. Through a forecasted proposal of future study, DSM proved tremendous potential annual energy savings, peak demand savings, and investment cost rates within different consumption sectors progressively up to year 2030.