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UNIT 1: LOAD FORECASTING

Q. What is load forecasting?

(Reference: Generation of Electrical Energy: B. R. Gupta, S. Chand & Company Ltd., 2012, pp. 33-34.)

 The load forecasting is nothing but a systematic procedure for quantitatively defining
the future loads.
 In preparing a forecast, the system planner is immediately confronted with the
following basic questions:
a) Should peak demand be forecasted using forecasted energy and load factors, or
should it be forecasted separately?
b) Should the total forecast be obtained by combining the forecast of appropriate
load components or should the total forecast be directly obtained from the
historical load data.
c) Should simple forecasting method be used or should more formal mathematical
procedures be employed.
 Each of above methodology has its own advantages and limitations. No one approach is
used by all the utilities consistently. Choosing the best method for given system
requires good judgment of planner.
 The answer to these fundamental questions sets the direction to be taken by the
forecaster to determine future requirements.
 Depending upon the time period of interest a specific forecasting procedure may be
classified as short time, intermediate and long time.
 Forecasting techniques may be divided into three broad classes,
1. Extrapolation
2. Correlation
3. Combination of both
 Before choosing a particular method, it should be clear that which method is simple and
superior and how the load behaves is more essential.

(Reference: Internet)
Definition of Electrical Load Forecast:

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“Electric Load Forecast is perform analysis of post or/and present data, identifying trends
and patterns that exist in the data, that are then used to project load into the future.”

Load forecasts can be divided into three categories: short-term forecasts which are usually
from one hour to one week, medium forecasts which are usually from a week to a year, and
long-term forecasts which are longer than a year. The forecasts for different time horizons are
important for different operations within a utility company. The natures of these forecasts are
different as well. For example, for a particular region, it is possible to predict a next day load
with an accuracy of approximately 1-3%. However, it is impossible to predict the next year
peak load with the similar accuracy since accurate long-term forecasts are not available. For
the next year peak forecast, it is possible to provide the probability distribution of the load
based on historical weather observations. It is also possible, according to the industry
practice, to predict the so-called weather normalized load, which would take place for
average annual peak weather conditions or worse than average peak weather conditions for a
given area.

Load forecasting has always been important for planning and operational decision conducted
by utility companies. However, with the deregulation of the energy industries, load
forecasting is even more important. With supply and demand -fluctuating with the changes of
weather conditions and energy prices increasing by a factor of ten or more during peak
situations, load forecasting is vitally important for utilities. Short-term load forecasting can
help to estimate load demands and to make decisions that can prevent overloading. Timely
implementations of such decisions lead to the improvement of network reliability and to the
reduction occurrences of equipment failures and blackouts. Load forecasting is also important
for contract evaluations and evaluations of various sophisticated financial products on energy
pricing offered by the market. In the deregulated economy, decisions on capital expenditures
based on long-term forecasting are also more important than in a non-deregulated economy
when rate increases could be justified by capital expenditure projects.

Over the last few decades a number of forecasting methods have been introduced. Most of
these methods use statistical techniques sometimes combined with artificial intelligence
algorithms such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, and expert systems. Two of the methods, so-
called end-use and econometric approach are broadly used for medium and long-term
forecasting. A variety of methods, that include the so-called similar day approach, various
regression models, time series, neural networks, statistical learning algorithms, fuzzy logic,
and expert systems, have been developed for short-term forecasting.

A large variety of mathematical methods and ideas have been used for load forecasting. The
development and improvements of appropriate mathematical tools will lead to the
development of more accurate load forecasting techniques.

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Q. Explain the factors affecting Load Forecasting.

There are various factors which affects the prediction of the future loads. These factors are
categorized into four category and they are as follows,
1. Time dependent factors
2. Weather dependent factors
3. Random factors
4. Other factors

1. Time dependent factors:

 Power system exhibits a time dependent pattern of electric load demand.

 At times, these factors are regular, irregular or random in nature.
 Pattern is exhibited during the time of day, day of week, week of the year & yearly
growth.
 Irregular pattern is exhibited on holidays , weekends ,special days etc. and the load
requirements tends to differ on these days as compared to the other days.
 Sometimes, the load requirements do not follow any of the above patterns due to
weather and other patterns.
The pattern is as follows-
Tuesday to Thursday: week days
Saturday & Sunday: weekends
Friday: pre-weekend
Monday: post-weekend

2. Weather dependent factors:

 Weather is one of the principal causes of load variations which affect domestic load,
commercial load, public lighting, etc.
 Therefore, it is essential to choose relevant weather variables & weather models.
 The weather variables chosen are temperature, humidity, cloud cover, visibility &
precipitation.
 The first two variables affect the domestic load i.e. heating & cooling, whereas the other
variables affect the lighting load.
 The cloud cover & visibility directly affects the lighting load.

3. Random factors:

 There is random phenomenon which affects the load consumption and cause large errors
in load forecast and they are known as „Random Factors‟.
 These factors includes school holidays, factory strikes, influence of popular TV
programmers.
 As the strikes are not regular phenomenon, their estimated load can be manually adjusted
by the forecaster.

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4. Other Factors:

 The other factors that influence the load demand includes,

 Effects of D & G(distributed generating devices)
 Effects of rate tariffs (time on day tariffs change in industrial tariffs)
 Changeover from winter time to summer time.
 Land use: (Residential, industrial, commercial, agriculture . . . etc.). Different types of
use affect the capacity of the substation, i.e. residential loads is different from industrial
loads.
 Population growth: As the population increases more loads are needed.
 Historical Data: Historical data plays an important role in forecasting since they can tell
how the load will behave in the future.
 Load Densities (KVA/Km2): Load density must be put into account during load
forecasting, we must consider the range of enmities as it differs for different types of
loads. Common figures for load densities are 1000 KVA/Km2 for agricultural areas;
3000 KVA/Km2 for residential areas; 5000 KVA/Km2 for city center and 10,000
KVA/Km2 for industrial areas.

So while Load forecasting it is important to consider all the above factors.

Q. Explain the classification of Loads.

(Reference: Generation of Electrical Energy: B. R. Gupta, S. Chand & Company Ltd., 2012, pp. 22-24.)

The load can be classified into different classes and these classes are as follows:
1. Residential Load (Domestic Load)
2. Commercial Load
3. Industrial Load
4. Other Loads

1. Residential load (Domestic Load):

 The residential consumers consume the power for the domestic purposes.
 The residential load occurs for some hours of the day, but has a large amount of
fluctuations.
 It includes fans, tubes, refrigerators, heaters, pumps and the other household appliances.
 The load factor of the residential load is low and it is about 10 to 15%.

2. Commercial load:

 The commercial load includes lighting for the shops, mallet.

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 It occurs for more hours in a day as compared to the domestic load and has less
fluctuation as compared to the domestic load.

3. Industrial load:

 The industrial consumers are the large scale consumers and they have nearly a constant
load.
 The load variations depend upon the types of industry i.e. Small scale, medium scale &
large scale.
Small scale: up to 25kw
Medium scale: 25kw to 100kw
Large scale: above 100kw

4. Other Loads:

The other types of load includes,

 Municipal Load- it consist of supply required for the street lighting, for the street
lighting, for the drainage purposes & for the water supplies.
 Irrigation Load - this load consist of supply for the pumps to supply water to the fields
& farms.
 Traction Load- it includes the supply for the trolley, cars, buses, rails or other Sub-way
vehicles.

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Q. What are the methods of Load Forecasting?

Forecasting is simply a systematic procedure for quantitatively defining future loads.

Depending on the time period of interest, a specific forecasting procedure may be classified
as a short term, intermediate or long term technique.

Because system planning is our basic concern and because planning for the flow generation,
transmission and distribution facilities must begin 4 - 10 year in advance of the actual in
service data, we shall be concerned with the methodology of intermediate-range forecasting.

Forecasting techniques may be divided into 3 broad classes: Extrapolation, Co-relation, and
Combination of both

A. Extrapolation

1. One method used by many utilities, for long range forecasting is Extrapolation.
Extrapolation technique involves the fitting of the trends curves to basic historical data
adjusted to reflect the growth trend itself.
2. With a trend curve the forecast is obtained by evaluation a trend curve function at the
design future point.
3. Although it is very simple procedure it produces reasonable results in some instances
such technique is to be classified as “Deterministic Extrapolation”. Since no attempt is
made to account for random errors in data.
4. Some 8-10 standards analytical function are used in trend curve fitting including
 Straight line
 Parabola
 S curve
 Exponential
 Combination
5. Where y is the load in year x (with base year zero) and a, b, c, d are constants
computed, generally by the method of least squares.
6. If the uncertainty of Extrapolated result is to be quantified using statistical data like
mean and variance then the techniques becomes “probabilistic Extrapolation”.
7. The uncertainty mainly arises from the two sources
 Uncertainty in historical data
 Uncertainty in the analytical data

B. Co-relation
1. Co-relation technique for the forecasting assume the system load to the wide variations.
2. The approach is advantageous in forcing forecaster to understand clearly
interrelationship between the load growth patterns and other measurable factors,
3. And the disadvantage is to forecast the demographic and economic factors which can be
more different than forecasting system load.
4. Such factors are population, employment, building permits, weather data, business etc.

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Q. What is energy forecasting?

 Energy forecast is to be developed using correlation and extrapolation techniques

primarily tempered with sound projection of future conditions.
 To start with the total energy forecast, the forecast for the three major classes of customers
(residential, commercial and industrial) are determined and then combined.
 Each class is forecast separately because of different characteristics associated with the
classes,
 Residential load
 Commercial load
 Industrial load
 Other load (Municipal load, Irrigation load, Traction load)

Q. Write a short note on ‘Peak Load Forecasting’.

 In particular we shall choose an approach to peak demand forecasting that involves

extrapolating historical data instead of calculating forecasted soles and load factors,
primarily because this approach permits weather conditions to be included with ease in
the forecast.
 In addition, we shall concentrate on weekly peak demand forecasting as opposed to
monthly or annual forecasting.
 The difference is in the amount of historical data available i.e. the data sampling rate.
Given weekly peak demand forecast, we shall find it state forward to obtain monthly or
annual forecast.
 The basic approach to be taken is
1. Determine seasonal weather load model.
2. Separate historical weather sensitive and non-weather sensitive components of
weekly peak demand using weather load model.
3. Forecast mean and variance on non-weather sensitive component of demand.
4. Extrapolate weather load model and forecast mean and variance of weather
sensitive model.
5. Determine mean, variance and density function of total weekly forecast.
6. Calculate density function monthly or annual forecast.
 For other purpose we shall assume that the seasonal variations of the peak demands are
primarily due to weather. If not, then before step 3 can be undertaken any additional
seasonal variations after weather sensitive variations are removed must also be
removed.
 Several methods removed such as seasonal variations, the method proposed by shiskin
has been successfully employed to use the forecasting method proposed, and the data
base of at least 12 year is recommended.
 Further to develop the weather load model, daily peaks and coincident weather variable
values are needed.

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Q. Explain Reactive Load forecasting.

 The reactive loads are difficult to predict as compared to the active loads, because the
reactive load is made up of not only the reactive components but also transmission and
distribution networks and VAR devices.
 In such cases, historical data VAR not work, as reactive load changes with change in
network configuration during varying operating conditions.
 Uses of active load forecast with power factor prediction may give somewhat
satisfactory results, but here only very recent past data can be used, assuming the steady
state network.
 Forecasted reactive loads are adopted with reactive requirements including VAR
devices.
 Reactive load forecast are used for security analysis, voltage and reactive power
scheduling etc.
 The continuing growth of power demand pushes power systems to operate increasingly
closer to their technical limits.
 To have good chances of meeting demand, control of system must be able to handle
those limits as well.
 If the control is inadequate, structural modifications have to be made, i.e. new
generating units, new lines or reactive power compensating devices have to be installed.

Q. What is the Load Growth Characteristics? Describe the Load Growth Characteristics
for various loads.

Load growth characteristics:

 Out of the 3 broad classes of load (residential, commercial and industrial) the residential
loads have the most constant annual growth rate & the most reasonable fluctuations.
 The seasonal variations of the residential components in many cases are responsible for
the seasonal variation in system peak, the extent of the residential influence depending
on the % of the total system load i.e. Residential.
 These characteristics are due to the wide spread use of the weather sensitive device such
as water heater, refrigerators, driers, etc.
 Commercial load are also characterized by seasonal fluctuations and again the
fluctuations are primarily due to the extensive use of air conditioning and space heating.
 The introduction of new devices such as the electrical cars, rapid transmits, etc. will
certainly influence the characteristic of future load.
 Industrial loads are considered as the base loads that contains very little weather
dependent variations. However depending upon the type of industry these loads may
have unique characteristics because of shift operations.
 Other loads such as traction, irrigation depending on the specific cases may have
seasonal variations. In most cases, however the growth trend for this classification is
considered.

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 In addition to tremendous impact of weather in residential and commercial loads, other

reasonable variations are caused by economic loads .Other seasonal variations are
caused by economic and demographic effects. Demographic effects also plays role in
establishing load patterns and may vary with the general migration factors.

Some definitions:

Load Duration Curve:

Line charts showing the percentage of time the hourly load was at or near peak values. The
Y-axis is percentage of peak; the X-axis is percentage of time.

Average Annual Energy:

Average kWh consumption of energy in specific time duration.

Non-Coincident Peak Demand:

Average peak hourly demand regardless of the time of occurrence .

Maximum Demand:
The maximum diversified demand of the energy consumed for specific time periods.

Load Factor (LF):

Ratio of average energy for the year (annual kWh/8760) to peak demand .

Coincident Factor (CF):

Ratio of maximum demand to the non-coincident peak. A related measure is the diversity
factor, which is the reciprocal of the coincidence factor.

Site Non-Coincident Peak Demand:

Average peak hour demand regardless of the time of occurrence .

Group Diversified Peak Demand:

The maximum, simultaneous, hourly demand of all sites for that month; it is determined by
averaging demand of the sites hour by hour and then finding the maximum demand for the
group.

Notes on this chapter are edited/created/generated by Monali Bhise, Minakshi Gavande,

Sheetal Rahane. If you like these notes then please fill free to say “thanks” to them.

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