ENERGY CLUSTERING
The second benchmark for comparison
is Class Load (Clutered Load). A class load is a
24 hour load profile for a typical utility customer
in a specific category. Utilities conduct load research
to determine patterns of utilization and then construct
class loads. Class loads represent the pattern of
use for each different tariff in the utility’s
rate structure. The residential class load for large
apartment houses will be different from the commercial
class load for small commercial customers and the
commercial class load for offices. The class load
shows how your facility compares to the average
customer in your class. The class load does not
show the absolute amount of kWh but rather the pattern
of use. Often the class load is described in a table
of percentages. The percentage of power used between
midnight and 12:15, the percentage between 12:15
and 12:30, etc. Multiplying your total use by the
percentages will result in a load profile for your
facility. The EIS will then chart your actual use
and compare it with the class load rendered to a
common scale. We recommend a 15 minute profile giving
96 intervals per day. An hourly profile does not
show enough detail and five minutes shows unnecessary
detail for most people. While we are talking about
electric loads, class loads also apply to gas, steam,
fuel oil, and water.
With the electricity market liberalisation, the
electricity distribution business looks for better
market strategies, based on adequate information
upon the consumption patterns of the electricity
customers. A fair insight on the customers' behaviour
allows the distribution utilities to better address
the operation of the distribution infrastructure
and its future enhancement, not to mention the ability
to design specific tariff options for the various
classes of customers in tune with real operation
costs. The customer characterisation can also be
used for an integrated system planning, by considering
the load management alternatives that can be performed
to meet the system peak demand in a very effective
way. For the load management, the effectiveness
of each alternative strategy has to be evaluated
by load research to identify the power consumption
of each customer class. Information on the customers
consumption patterns can be gathered through the
use of the daily load curve, which has been extensively
used for years, but the identification of the contribution
of different classes of customers in the presence
of an aggregation of loads belonging to different
classes in the new open market scenario has yet
to be refined.
Efforts to put some order in the tools to analyse
the load diagrams have been produced for quite some
years. We can mention the systematic approach used
in UK, according to which several subclasses are
defined within each major class of customers, for
each of them a different tariff being assigned.
This approach is backed by .some extensive field
measurement campaigns that span over two decades.
A rather similar approach has been implemented in
Taipei, together with a comprehensive survey system.
The load diagram associated to each average customer
is the load profire of the corresponding
customer class. The economical aspects related to
the possible tariff diversification for the various
customer classes are investigated by using the load
profiles for providing suggestions on possible market
strategies seen from the point of view of the electricity
utility.
Traditionally, most utility companies classified
their customers according to a few electrical parameters
and some commercial codes. In the liberalised electricity
market, there is a strong need for classifying the
electricity customers on the basis of indicators
able to characterise their true electrical behaviour.
Clustering or any other mechanism used to form the
customer classes must be clear, transparent and
easily understandable, but it should be sufficiently
flexible to follow the variations in the load patterns
of the customers induced by the presence of dedicated
tariffs. A possible scenario of the interactions
among customer and supplier could be the following:
- the customer comes to the
supplier, states its type of activity and is assigned/free
to choose a starting tariff;
- the supplier monitors the customer for a specified
period (e.g., 3-6 months) and establishes a reference
pattern for its load diagram;
- the supplier fits the reference pattern to one
of the customer classes already defined and identifies
the appropriate tariff;
- the supplier performs a continuous monitoring
of the daily load curves of all customers, periodically
updates the reference patterns and the composition
of the customer classes by automatic clustering
and adjusts the tariffs applied to each customer
class such as to maximise its foreseeable profits
in the respect of possible price caps.
The above methodology is fully
performed through EMIR EIS System
For more information contacts at:
info@intelen.gr
