With rapid development of smart grid, terminal power load is paid more and more attention, especially that of air conditioning system, which constitute an integral part of summer peak electricity load. In this paper, through controlling indoor air temperature deduced by equivalent thermal parameters-model, daily energy consumption and energy consumption during peak hours can be adjusted and reduced to realize demand side management. To reduce peak load of grid and ensure stable and reliable operation of grid, four temperature control strategies, including constant setting temperature control strategy, pre-cooling control strategy, curtailment control strategy and improved curtailment control strategy were proposed. Meanwhile, three operation schemes of the chiller were also employed. Furthermore, considering the power consumption and curtailment, five indicators including hourly average load, hourly average load ratio, energy saving ratio, load-shedding ratio during peak hours and coefficient of performance (COP) have been proposed to evaluate the performance. Results showed that the operation scheme of operating numbers control obtained better effect. Energy saving ratio was highest of 32.5% with curtailment control strategy, while load-shedding ratio during peak hours was optimal with improved curtailment control strategy. However, COP was maximum at 3.66 when pre-cooling control strategy was employed. This study can guide the operation of water-cooled air conditioning system through energy saving ratio and COP, also it has more benefits on economy of power system by hourly average load and load-shedding ratio. INDEX TERMS Load management, temperature control, power demand, operations research.