Module-2

Load Characteristics
A.K. Mishra

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 PREDICTION OF CUSTOMERS DEMAND
CHARACTERISTICS

 Distribution system design/planning from

consumers
 Necessary the electricity use pattern for each
individual consumers
 An electric utility’s customers purchase electricity
as a means to some end-uses for which electricity
is only an intermediate means.
 These end-uses span a wide range of applications
with its unique behavior.
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 The term load in general refers to:
The demand of a device connected to and
draws power from the system for the purpose
of accomplishing some task or converting that
power to some other form of energy.
So for analysis of load characteristics :
It is very important for all planers that they
must have knowledge (through understanding)
of Who is buying their electricity and of
course for what purpose?.
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 The load almost for any consumer vary from hour to hour, from
day to day and from season to season.
The load as a function of time are called load curve.

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 The planner is most interested in Annual peak
load & energy Sell.
– Annual peak --- the equipment capacity
requirements.
– Energy Sell --- benefit to the utility.
 The load factor gives the relation between
energy and peak demand
KWh / hrs
LF 
Peak Kw

KWh
LF 
Peak Kw  hrs

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 It depends on
– Customer end-uses
– Daily, monthly or yearly basis.
– level of power delivery system.
(usually higher at higher level)
 It gives the extent to which the
peak load is maintained during the
period under study.
– Great economic activity High
LF
– low economic conditions Low
LF.
 Lower load factor not only requires
high capital investments but also
higher system losses and voltage
drops.
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 Prediction of load curve at any unit of
equipment
 Every customer is somewhat different in his/her
electrical usage.
 There is no even two electrical customers who uses
electrical energy of identical characteristics even a very
small fraction of time.
 For simplicity often electric utilities group their
customers based on similar end-use appliances e.g.
residential, commercial, industrial, irrigation etc.
 These classes are further subdivided into sub-classes
based on their per capita income, spatial locations etc.
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 Typical load variation

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 But truly speaking:
 There is no consumer in any utility whose load curve is
such a smooth curve similar to that.
 The natural question is the smooth representation is
correct?
 If not why people use it?

 To get the answer

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 These peaks are observable even all the equipments are
connected continuously to the supply because many
appliances are of its on ON/OFF cycles.
 What would be the case if many such devices connected
in group?

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Suppose
we were to consider one hundred homes served by
the same segment of a distribution feeder.
In this case,
 Though each household will have an individual
daily load curve similar to the erratic and choppy ,
Each will be slightly different appliances, is
occupied by people with slightly different
schedules and usage preference,
 The individual peaks are not additives because
they occur at different times. Do not occur
simultaneously.
 They are non-coincident.
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 AKM/distplang/Load
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 Coincidence Factor
 The tendency of observed peak load per consumer to
drop as the size of the customer group being observed
increases is termed coincidence
 And is measured by the coincidence factor, the
fraction of its individual peak that each customer
contributes to the group’s peak.

Observed peak for the group

C = Coincidence factor =
 individualpeaks

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  Since the load curves vary depending on number of
sample consumers taken.
 Thus coincidence factor, C, can be thought of as a
function of the number of customers in a group.
Observed peak for the group of n customers
C(n) = Coincidence factor =
 individualpeaks

 C(n) has the value between 0 and 1 and usually

decreases with increased number of customers

Group peak load for n consumer = C(n) x n x average individual peak load

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 Example
Peak load(kw)
Consumer Monthly
class energy 1 10 50 100 200
consumption Consumer Cons. Cons. Cons. Cons.
Kwh/consumer

Class A 30 0.6 4 15 25 50
Class B 20 0.5 3 10 15 30
Class C 30 0.7 5 20 35 70

Determine the load factor and coincidence factor for each

consumer class as a function of number of consumer.

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 Solution For Class-B consumer
Load factor for classB Lf(n)
Lf(1)=20/(.5*30*24) 0.055
Lf(10)=(20*10)/(3*30*24) 0.092
Lf(50)=(20*50)/(10*30*24) 0.139
Lf(100)=(20*100)/(15*30*24) 0.185
Lf(200)=(20*200)/(30*30*24) 0.185
Coincidence
factor for class B Cf(n)
Cf(1)=.5/.5 1
Cf(10)=3/(10*.5) 0.6
Cf(50)=10/(50*.5) 0.4
Cf(100)=15/(100*.5) 0.3
Cf(200)=30/(200*.5) 0.3
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 Observation
 For the consumers average energy
consumptions is known the load
factor and coincidence factor gives
the same information's
 Hence sometimes for such consumer
class coincidence factor specified is 1
or around 1
 But this does not mean it has 1
coincidence factor in practice

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 1

0.8

C oinc edanc e fac tor

Peak Load /
C us tom er

0.4

0
1 10 100 1000 10000
Number of Cus tomer in Group

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 The duration of the peak increases as the
number of customer in group increases.
 i.e. Low coincidence factor results longer peak
periods.

70

60
Peak Load duration (minutes)

50

40

30

20

10

0
1 10 100 1000 10000
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 Sometimes engineers use diversity factor instead
of coincidence factor.
D = Diversity factor=1/Coincidence factor

 Diversity is a term used to cover the fact that

individual loads occur at different times.
 This means that if the maximum load of two
or more loads are added, their sum will
generally be greater than the true sum
because these peaks occur at different times.

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 Contribution Factor
 Contribution factor at a instant of time of a
particular class Consumer is the ratio of class
demand at the instant of time to class peak
demand
 That is contribution factor at instant of class
peak is ………
 The time variation of contribution factor is
known as load pattern of that consumer class
 Peak demand together with load pattern
gives load curve of the consumer class
 Numerical Example:

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 To determine the actual load at any equipment level we
need to consider the coincidence among the classes.
 This is because the load pattern for each class is
different and need not necessarily coincide the peak
value.

Equipment peak load = Rr(n) x group peak load for residential +

Rc(n) x group peak load for commercial +……+

Rnc(n) x group peak load for non commercial

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 Responsibility Factor
 Responsibility Factor of perticular
class consumer is the contribution
factor of that class consumer at the
time of system Peak
 It is thus a measure of how much
that consumer class contributes to
the system peak load.
 From utility point’s of view consumer
class with……………Responsibilty factor
is highly advantageous.
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 Residential
30.00
comercial
25.00
Non comercial
20.00
commulative
15.00
Load (kW)

10.00

5.00

0.00
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23
Time (hr)

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 Load pattern
 For the determination of Class wise load
pattern following method may be
applicable
1. By measurement
 Use the TOD meter/ energy meter for
varying the consumer numbers
simultaneously to get the load pattern
– E.g. TOD meter may be connect to record the
load curve for 1 residential consumer,10
residential consumer ( one separate lateral of a
LT, 50 consumers connected in a LT feeder or
200 consumers connected in a load center
– While doing so selection must consider that
almost similar types of consumers connected in
a selected group
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 If one or a few other types of consumer
are connected in the group which can not
be separated,
– The measurement may be carried out including
those and separate observations may be done
for that
– Later subtracting from the group we can get
the load curve for the desired class.
 The observations may be repeated for;
– Different consumer class
– Different geographical location Hill, Tarai
– Urban, semi urban, rural
– Other possible variation
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 Sampling Time Selection

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 What would be the sampling time for
accurate representation of load curve
coincidence?

 Fig. in last page shows load curve for 5

residential consumers group on a 15, 30,
60 and 120 minute basis.
 It is evident from the figure that high
sampling rate is needed when studying the
non-coincident load behavior of small
groups of customers.
 But this may not be needed for large
consumers group.
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 Simulation method
 The load on a perticular distribution
transformer(Load center) at a particular
instant could be expressed as;
P(t)= D1N1+D2N2+D3N4+……+DkNk
 Where

– Dk average demand per consumer for kth

Class
– Nk Number of consumer for kth Class
 Supposes we have the load curve of many
such distribution transformers

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 D1 N 11  D2 N 21  D3 N 31  ...............  Dk N k1  TD1
D1 N 12  D2 N 22  D3 N 32  ...............  Dk N k 2  TD2
D1 N 13  D2 N 23  D3 N 33  ...............  Dk N k 3  TD3
………………………………………………..
D1 N 1n  D2 N 2 n  D3 N 3n  ...............  Dk N kn  TDn

In matrix Form

 N 11 N 21 N k1   D1  TD1 
N N 22 N k 2   D2  TD2 
 12 
 ... .... ... ....     
    
 N 1n N 2n N kn   Dk  TDn 
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 In Simple form
N D = TD
N' N D= N' TD
-1
D = [N'N] N' TD
 Hence vector D can be obtained for a
particular instant
 Repeating the same for all samples we can
get the average load curve per consumer
for all the classes
 Still the problem of consumer number
effect consideration etc remains which can
be tackle with appropriate logic.
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 Dividing the load curve by their peak
results the load pattern
 Load pattern itself carry the
information regarding Load Factor
 Hence for consumers energy data is
available this method may be more
suitable
 The measurement method gives clear
idea about coincidence

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Load Growth Factor
 Aalready described: in a power delivery
system there is a continuous load growth at
every level.
 But this growth pattaren is not same in
differnt levels
 E.g. consider the load growth for
– the Kathmandu valley for last few years
– Then same for the Kathmandu district
– then at a substation
– and fi ally at the distribution transformer
 The growth curve becomes more and more
non-linear from large area to smaller areas.
 The S shape load growth pattern is a typical
load growth at the distribution transformer
(service area) level.
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 Load

Years

Fig. 9.a

Load

Years

Fig. 9.b

Load

Years

Fig. 9.c

Load

Years

Fig. 9.d

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