SECTOR ANALYSIS OF THE DUTCH ELECTRICITY LOAD SHAPE

Important aspects of electricity system planning are overall yearly el ectricity consumption and information about variations in consumption. These variations will influence the capacity that has to be installed , as well as the type and quantity of fuel that will be used. Using on ly economic, socio-economic, technical and meteorological indicators, we have developed a model that can predict the hourly load shape. This model is based on a division of the total electricity-consumption int o 60 economic sectors and electrical appliances. For each of these sec tors, a load shape is formed. Summation over sectors then gives the to tal hourly electricity consumption pattern. To test this model, the ho ur-to-hour load shape of the Dutch public grid for 1980 was formulated and compared with the actual load shape. The root-mean-square differe nce between the estimated and actual load shapes is 5% of the mean hou rly load. The accuracy of the estimated maximum load for every week is of the same magnitude as that used for electricity-supply system plan ning over the short term. We conclude that our model can be used for l ong-term load shape forecasting.