Initial load and generation profiles from CLNR monitoring trials
Overview
The Customer-Led Network Revolution (CLNR) project is undertaking a series of monitoring trials to understand current and emerging UK domestic, SME and industrial load and generation profiles. A load or generation profile is a common term to describe the diurnal pattern of load or generation for a given electricity customer or group of customers.
The CLNR trials are on-going, this report represents a snapshot of the data that has been collected to date and provides some initial findings. Seasonal electrical load profiles for general customers, both residential and business (SME), are studied and presented. Data from a small group of customers with low-carbon technologies including heat pumps, electric vehicles and solar PV who are in the early stages of their trials has been examined and some initial monthly profiles have been demonstrated. Lastly, an analysis of larger distributed generation sites has been undertaken with a view to understanding the ill-defined concept of a “generation profile”; various classes of generation from a large dataset have been identified and presented from the data.
While load and generation profiles are of interest in themselves, there is also a specific requirement within the CLNR project to recommend updates to electricity industry standards ACE49, ETR130 and P2/6, which define how load and generation types are to be considered in distribution network design.
The profiles demonstrated herein are a first-stage preparatory exercise to understand and classify the CLNR data collected during the trials, and to identify further analysis that is required to allow these recommendations to changes to industry standards to take place. Development of the theoretical and computational methods required to incorporate new load profiles into the load and generation standards is on-going within the CLNR project, and will be informed by the output of this analysis.
This report is accompanied by a series of datasets (CLNR-L011) in Excel spreadsheet form which contain the derived load profiles and additional explanatory data. These datasets are provided in an open and usable format for use by other distributors and researchers.
