Systems and methods for controlling behind-the meter energy storage/management systems (EMSs) for battery-optimized demand charge minimized operations, including determining an optimal monthly demand charge threshold based on a received customer load profile and a customer load profile and savings. The determining of the monthly demand charge threshold includes iteratively performing daily optimizations to determine a daily optimal demand threshold for each day of a month, selecting a monthly demand threshold by clustering the daily optimal demand thresholds for each day of the month into groups, and determining a dominant group representative of a load pattern for a next month. A mean demand threshold for the dominant group is selected as the monthly demand threshold, and continuous battery-optimized demand charge minimized EMS operations are provided based on the monthly demand threshold using a real-time controller configured for overriding the optimal charging/discharging profiles when a monthly demand threshold violation is detected.