![Duck_Curve_CA-ISO_2016-10-22](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Duck_Curve_CA-ISO_2016-10-22.agr.png)
In
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
, a load profile is a graph of the variation in the
electrical load
An electrical load is an electrical component or portion of a circuit that consumes (active) electric power, such as electrical appliances and lights inside the home. The term may also refer to the power consumed by a circuit. This is opposed t ...
versus time. A load profile will vary according to customer type (typical examples include residential, commercial and industrial), temperature and holiday seasons. Power producers use this information to plan how much electricity they will need to make available at any given time.
Teletraffic engineering
Teletraffic engineering, telecommunications traffic engineering, or just traffic engineering when in context, is the application of transportation traffic engineering theory to telecommunications. Teletraffic engineers use their knowledge of stat ...
uses a similar load curve.
Power generation
In a power system, a load curve or load profile is a chart illustrating the variation in demand/electrical load over a specific time. Generation companies use this information to plan how much power they will need to generate at any given time. A
load duration curve is similar to a load curve. The information is the same but is presented in a different form. These curves are useful in the selection of
generator
Generator may refer to:
* Signal generator, electronic devices that generate repeating or non-repeating electronic signals
* Electric generator, a device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy.
* Generator (circuit theory), an eleme ...
units for supplying electricity.
Electricity distribution
In an
electricity distribution
Electric power distribution is the final stage in the delivery of electric power; it carries electricity from the transmission system to individual consumers. Distribution substations connect to the transmission system and lower the transmissio ...
grid
Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to:
Common usage
* Cattle grid or stock grid, a type of obstacle is used to prevent livestock from crossing the road
* Grid reference, used to define a location on a map
Arts, entertainment, and media
* News g ...
, the load profile of electricity usage is important to the efficiency and reliability of power transmission. The power
transformer
A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...
or
battery-to-grid
A grid-tied electrical system, also called ''tied to grid'' or ''grid tie system'', is a semi-autonomous electrical generation or grid energy storage system which links to the mains to feed excess capacity back to the local mains electrical grid. ...
are critical aspects of power distribution and sizing and modelling of batteries or transformers depends on the load profile. The factory specification of transformers for the optimization of
load losses versus no-load losses is dependent directly on the characteristics of the load profile that the transformer is expected to be subjected to.
This includes such characteristics as average
load factor,
diversity factor
In the context of electricity, the diversity factor is the ratio of the sum of the individual non-coincident maximum loads of various subdivisions of the system to the maximum demand of the complete system.
: f_\text = \frac
The diversity factor ...
,
utilization factor
The utilization factor or use factor is the ratio of the time that a piece of equipment is in use to the total time that it could be in use. It is often averaged over time in the definition such that the ratio becomes the amount of energy used d ...
, and
demand factor
In telecommunication, electronics and the electrical power industry, the term demand factor is used to refer to the fractional amount of some quantity being used relative to the maximum amount that could be used by the same system. The demand facto ...
, which can all be calculated based on a given load profile.
On the
power market so-called
EFA blocks are used to specify the
trade
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
d
forward contract
In finance, a forward contract or simply a forward is a non-standardized contract between two parties to buy or sell an asset at a specified future time at a price agreed on at the time of conclusion of the contract, making it a type of deriva ...
on the delivery of a certain amount of electrical energy at a certain time.
Retail energy markets
In retail energy markets, supplier obligations are settled on an hourly or subhourly basis. For most customers, consumption is measured on a monthly basis, based on meter reading schedules. Load profiles are used to convert the monthly consumption data into estimates of hourly or subhourly consumption in order to determine the supplier obligation. For each hour, these estimates are aggregated for all customers of an energy supplier, and the aggregate amount is used in market settlement calculations as the total demand that must be covered by the supplier.
Calculating and recording load profiles
Load profiles can be determined by direct metering but on smaller devices such as distribution network transformers this is not routinely done. Instead a load profile can be inferred from customer billing or other data. An example of a practical calculation used by utilities is using a transformer's maximum demand reading and taking into account the known number of each customer type supplied by these transformers. This process is called
load research
Load or LOAD may refer to:
Aeronautics and transportation
*Load factor (aeronautics), the ratio of the lift of an aircraft to its weight
*Passenger load factor, the ratio of revenue passenger miles to available seat miles of a particular transpo ...
.
Actual demand can be collected at strategic locations to perform more detailed load analysis; this is beneficial to both distribution and end-user customers looking for peak consumption.
Smart grid
A smart grid is an electrical grid which includes a variety of operation and energy measures including:
*Advanced metering infrastructure (of which smart meters are a generic name for any utility side device even if it is more capable e.g. a f ...
meters
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...
, utility meter load profilers, data logging sub-meters and portable data loggers are designed to accomplish this task by recording readings at a set interval.
See also
*
Cost of electricity by source
Different methods of electricity generation can incur a variety of different costs, which can be divided into three general categories: 1) wholesale costs, or all costs paid by utilities associated with acquiring and distributing electricity to ...
*
Duck curve
The duck curve is a graph of power production over the course of a day that shows the timing imbalance between peak demand and renewable energy production. Used in utility-scale electricity generation, the term was coined in 2012 by the Cali ...
*
Electricity generation
Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For electric utility, utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its Electricity delivery, delivery (Electric power transmi ...
*
Electric power transmission
Electric power transmission is the bulk movement of electrical energy from a generating site, such as a power plant, to an electrical substation. The interconnected lines that facilitate this movement form a ''transmission network''. This is ...
*
Electric power distribution
Electric power distribution is the final stage in the delivery of electric power; it carries electricity from the transmission system to individual consumers. Distribution substations connect to the transmission system and lower the transmissi ...
*
Load duration curve
*
Peak demand
Peak demand on an electrical grid is simply the highest electrical power demand that has occurred over a specified time period (Gönen 2008). Peak demand is typically characterized as annual, daily or seasonal and has the unit of power.
Peak dem ...
*
Vehicle-to-grid
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G), also known as Vehicle-to-home (V2H) or Vehicle-to-load (V2L) describes a system in which plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) sell demand response services to the grid. Demand services are either delivering electricity or by red ...
*
Unit commitment problem in electrical power production The unit commitment problem (UC) in electrical power production is a large family of mathematical optimization problems where the production of a set of electrical generators is coordinated in order to achieve some common target, usually either mat ...
*
Duty cycle
A duty cycle or power cycle is the fraction of one period in which a signal or system is active. Duty cycle is commonly expressed as a percentage or a ratio. A period is the time it takes for a signal to complete an on-and-off cycle. As a formu ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Load Profile
Electronic engineering
Electric power
Electrical systems