FORECASTING ELECTRIC DEMAND OF DISTRIBUTION-SYSTEM PLANNING IN RURAL AND SPARSELY POPULATED REGIONS

Modern computerized distribution load forecasting methods, although ac curate when applied to urban areas, give somewhat less satisfactory re sults when forecasting load growth in sparsely populated rural areas. This paper examines the differences between rural and urban load growt h histories, identifying a major difference in the observed behavior o f load growth. This difference is exploited in a new simulation foreca sting algorithm. Tests show the new method is as accurate in forecasti ng rural load growth and as useful for analyzing DSM impacts than past methods, while requiring considerably lower computer resources and da ta than other simulation methods of comparable accuracy.