Electricity customer characterization based on different representative load curves

Load profiling provides the necessary information about daily demand patterns for the short and medium-term actions οf retailers and utilities. Consumer characterization is a two stage approach: In the first stage, the daily load curves of each consumer are classified in a certain number of clusters. Each cluster constitutes a load profile. In the second stage, one of these profiles is chosen as representative for the consumer and a new classification takes places between the load profiles of each customer, leading to the formulation of customer classes. This paper examines various approaches for the formulation of the consumer classes during the first stage. A specific profile is chosen and the second stage procedure takes place. A criterion based on cost of purchased electricity is introduced in order to evaluate the results of the clustering of the second stage.