METERING AND MODELING RESIDENTIAL END-USE ELECTRICITY LOAD CURVES

In most electricity systems the residential sector is one of the main contributors to the system peak. This makes it important to know how d ifferent residential end uses, such as space heating or cooking, contr ibute to the system load curve at the time of system peak and also at other times of the day. In this paper we discuss the estimation of res idential end-use load curves for the state of New South Wales in Austr alia. Half-hourly readings were taken for 15 months on the total load and a range of end-use loads of 250 households. Information was sought on 16 different end uses, while eight metering channels were availabl e for each household. We describe the optimal design procedure used to determine which end uses to meter in each household. The econometric model used for estimating the end-use load curves integrates a conditi onal demand analysis (CDA) of the total load readings for the househol d with the readings on all the directly metered end uses. Our integrat ed approach achieves impressive gains in efficiency over the conventio nal approach to estimating end-use loads. The paper concludes with an illustration of how end-use load curves can be used to simulate a vari ety of policy options.