Commercial and industrial customers are subject to the monthly maximum demand charges which can be as high as 30% of the total electricity bills. Battery-based energy storage system (BESS) can be used to reduce the monthly maximum demand charges. A number of control strategies have been developed for the BESS to reduce the daily peak demands. A fuzzy control algorithm is developed to reduce the daily peak demands with the limited capacity of the BESS. Its performance is evaluated at two different buildings, namely building A and B. The fuzzy controller forecasts the load profile one day in advance using the historical load data. Then during the day of peak reduction, the controller will adjust the power output of BESS using the latest state of charge and operation time. The performance of the fuzzy controller is compared with other two controllers developed in the past. The experimental results show that fuzzy controller is the most effective approach for the peak reduction under the limited capacity of the BESS. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.