2006 International Conference on Power System Technology
A New Approach to Determine Base,
Intermediate and Peak-Demand in an
Power System
A. Salimi-beni
Iran Grid Management Company-IGMC
Beni(tavanir.org.ir
D. Farrokhzad
Iran Grid Management Company-IGMC
farokhzadgtavanir.org.ir
Abstract--Electricity demand varies from place to place and from
country to country depending on the mix of demand, the climate,
and other factors. A typical load curve of a power electricity
system through one period of time is normally divided into three
parts as base, intermediate and peak-load. While having
accurate information for the three parts of a load curve is very
important, it is not an easy task to calculate the base,
intermediate and peak-load of a particular system. This paper
presents a new statistical approach to calculate the three main
parts of a system load demand; base, intermediate and peak-load
using a cluster analysis which is one of the statistical methods to
in data categorizing. The main advantage of the proposed
technique is that it can be applied to situations in which LDC or
system load factor varies. The applicability of the proposed
technique is illustrated by determining the base, intermediate
and peak-load for different seasons of Iran power network.
Index Terms--Base load, cluster analysis, Intermediate load,
Load Division Curve(LDC), Peak load.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE importance of electricity in our economy and in all
aspects of our lives is constantly growing. Modem
society because of its pattern of social and working habits
has come to expect the supply to be continuously available on
demand. This can only be achieved by focusing on all aspects
of an electric power system from the generating units through
the transmission system down to the customer at the end of
the distribution system. At the same time, electric power
utilities are required to operate their systems more efficiently
and economically and therefore the planning process is
becoming a critical factor in determining the performance and
design of power systems. One of the main issues in this regard
is to acknowledge that reliable forecasting of the expected
growth in electric energy demand is the fundamental
determinant of the necessity for system development and/or
reinforcement.
1-4244-0111-9/06/$20.00c02006 IEEE.
Electric
M. Fotuhi-Firuzabad
Department of Electrical Engineering
Sharif University of Technology
fotuhi@sharif.edu
S. J. Alemohammad
Khozestan Electric Power Regional Company
Accurate load forecasting is an important issue as it
ensures the availability of supply and also provides a mean to
avoid over or under utilization of generation, transmission and
distribution facilities. Electricity demand fluctuates
throughout every 24-hour period as well as through the week,
and also seasonally. It also varies from place to place and
from country to country depending on the mix of demand, the
climate, and other factors. A typical load curve of a power
electricity system through one period of time is normally
divided into three parts as base, intermediate and peak-load.
Figure 1 shows these three main parts. The shape of such a
curve will vary markedly according to the kind of demand.
While having accurate information for the three parts of a
load curve is very important, it is not an easy task to calculate
the base, intermediate and peak-load of a particular system.
Determination of these three main parts of system demand is
one of the major issues in power system planning.
Because of the large fluctuations in demand over the
course of the day, it is normal to have several types of power
stations broadly categorized as base-load, intermediate-load
and peak load stations. The base load stations [4] are usually
steam- driven and run more or less continuously at near rated
power output. Coal and nuclear power are the main energy
sources used. Intermediate-load and peak-load stations must
be capable of being brought on line and shut down quickly
once or twice daily. A variety of techniques are used for
intermediate and peak-load generation including gas turbines,
gas-and oil-fired steam boilers and hydro-electric generation.
Peak-load equipment tends to be characterized by low capital
cost, and relatively high fuel cost is not a great problem.
 2

LDC Iran Network 2001 d (P, Q) = (x1 - Y1)2 + (x2 - Y2 )2 + + (x_y_ )2

25000 =^\/X - Y ) )' X - (1)

Peak load The statistical distance between the same two observations
20000 can be expressed in the form of:
1-ect Intermediate load
15000 d(X,Y) = (- (- Y)
Base load
10000 _N Ordinarily, A = S 1 where S contains the sample variances
and co-variances.
,

Another distance measure is the

1 1441 2881 4321 5761 7201
Time
Fig 1. Iran load duration curve for 2001
The base load demand [1] for reliable, continuous supply
of large amounts of electricity is the key factor in any system.
The main investment of any electric utility is to meet that kind
of demand. As well as daily and weekly variations in demand
there are gradual changes occurring in the pattern of
electricity demand from year to year. In most literature,
attempt has not been devoted to develop a technique to
calculate base, intermediate and peak-load. [5] [8] -
This paper presents a new statistical approach to calculate the
three main parts of a system load demand; base, intermediate and
peak-load. This technique is based on a cluster analysis which is one
of the statistical methods in data categorizing. The main advantage
of the proposed technique is that it can be applied to situations in
which LDC or system load factor varies. The applicability of the
proposed technique is illustrated by determining base, intermediate
and peak-load for different seasons of Iran power network.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Cluster analysis
Grouping or clustering is distinct from the classification
methods. Classification pertains to a known number of
groups, and the operational objective is to assign new
observations to one of these groups. Cluster analysis is
concerned with forming groups of similar objects based on
several measurement of different kinds made on the objects.
The key idea is to identify classifications of the objects that
would be useful for the aims of the analysis. This idea has
been applied in various areas. Before implementing any
technique for clustering, it is required to define a measure for
distances between utilities so that similar utilities are a short
distance apart and dissimilar. Ones are far from each other, a
popular distance measure based on variables that take on
values is to standardize the values by dividing by the standard
deviation (sometimes other measures such as range are used)
and then to compute the distance between objects using the
Euclidean metric method.
B. Similarity measure
The straight-line distance between two arbitrary points P
and Q with coordinates
P = (XI x2 ... , ) and
(YI,Y2. ,)
is given by
8641
Minkowski metric:
Il/m
(2)
d (P, Q) =
i=l
x
i-yilm
For m=1, d(X,Y) measures the " city-block" distance
between two points in p dimensions. For m=2, d(X,Y)
becomes the Euclidean distance. In general, varying m
changes the weight is given to the larger and smaller
differences. The construction of distances and similarities has
been described. It is always possible to construct similarities
from distances. For example, we might set
Sik
(3)
1 + dik
Where 0 < Sik <1 is the similarity between items i and k
and di. is the corresponding distance. The less subjective
schemes for creating clusters will be discussed in more detail.
In general, there are two main approaches for clustering and
they are [2]:
1. Hierarchical cluster methods
2. Nonhierarchical cluster methods
The second approach is used in this paper.
Nonhierarchical clustering techniques are designed to group
items into a collection of k clusters, rather than variables. The
number of clusters, k, may either be specified in advance or
determined as part of the clustering procedure. Because a
matrix of distances (similarities) does not have to be
determined and the basic data do not have to be stored during
the computer run, nonhierarchical methods can be applied to
much larger data sets than hierarchical techniques. One of the
more popular nonhierarchical procedures known as the k-
means is investigated in the following subsection.
C. K-means method:
This algorithm [3] assigns each item to the cluster having
the nearest centroid (mean). In its simplest version, the
process is composed of these three steps:
1. Partition the items in to k initial cluster.
2. Proceed through the list of items, assigning an item to the
cluster whose centroid (mean) is nearest. (Distance is
usually computed using Euclidean distance with either
standardized or unstandardized observations) recalculate
the centriod for the cluster receiving the new item and for
the cluster losing the item.
 3

3. Repeat step 2 until no more reassignments take place. 1 2

Rather than starting with a partition of all items into k
LOAD2001 20318 15003
preliminary groups in step 1. We could specify k initial
centroids (seed points) and then proceed to step 2.
The final assignment of items to clusters will be, to some 30000
extent, dependent upon the initial partition or the initial
selection of seed points. Experience shows that most major
changes in assignment occur with the first reallocation step. 25000

APPLICATION
III. -20000 a
Using the approach described in the previous sections, the 0

three main parts of the system load demand, base load, 15000
intermediate load and peak load, are calculated using an
statistical software SPSS. Hourly peak loads of Iran network 10000
as well as Khozestan region are used for the study results
1 1441 2881 4321 5761 7201 864
presented in this paper.
Time
A. Calculating base, intermediate and peak load of Iran
network Fig. 2. Hourly peak load of Iran in year 2001.

Using the nonhierarchical cluster algorithm and K-Means
technique presented in the previous section, the intervals
associated with the base and peak load of Iran network are
calculated. The hourly peak load of Iran network for the year
2001 are used for the analysis presented in this section. In the
first step, the number of cluster is assumed to be 2 and based
on the first step of the proposed algorithm initial cluster
centers are determined. These values are shown in Table I.
TABLE I
Initial Cluster Centers
Cluster
1 2
LOAD2001 26385 10453
In the second step, the algorithm is converged after 7
iterations. The results associated with each iteration are
presented in Table II. After convergence, based on the third
step of the proposed algorithm, final clusters are obtained as
As noted earlier,[9] having accurate information on the base,
intermediate and peak load is an important issue as it ensures the
availability of supply and also provides a mean to avoid over or
under utilization of generation, transmission and distribution
facilities. Figure 3 shows that the system requires base load
stations for 27.45% of the time during a year. Thermal and
nuclear units are appropriate for the base load. 54.111% of the
time period, this system requires generating units appropriate
for the intermediate load. Combined cycle units are
considered to be appropriate for the intermediate load. Finally
the system should have sufficient peak load stations for
18.44% of the year. Hydro and gas turbine units are in the
peak load station categories.
30000
Peak load
25000 18.44%
- 20000
ct
0

shown in Table III. The values lower than the minimum 15000
cluster; here 15003 MW, are considered as base load while Base load
the values upper than the maximum cluster; here 20318 MW, 27.45%
are considered to be the peak load. The distance between the
10000 L
peak and base load is the intermediate load as shown in 1 1441 2881 4321 5761 7201 8641
Figure 2. Time
TABLE II Fig. 3. Load duration curve of Iran network for 2001
Iteration History
Change in Cluster Centers B. Calculating Base, Intermediate and Peak load of
Iteration 1 2 Khozestan Region Network
1 5608.275 4861.253
2 216.329 146.022 Khozestan is located in the south west of Iran and has a
3 113.640 76.818 very hot climate. This is the main reason in selecting this
4 66.440 45.443 region separately from the whole country presented in
5 34.363 23.721 Subsection A. In addition, the study results presented in this
6 18.600 12.864 section can be compared with those obtained for the whole
7 6.691 4.621
TABLE III country to show the impacts of weather climate on the
percentage of base, intermediate and peak load. Similar to the
Final Cluster Centers previous study, the hourly peak load of 2001 for Khozestan
Cluster region is used for the analysis of this section.
 4

Using the nonhierarchical cluster algorithm and K-Means

technique, the intervals associated with the base and peak load 4250 Peak load
of Khozestan region are calculated. In the first step, the
number of cluster is assumed to be 2 and based on the first 3400
step of the proposed algorithm initial cluster centers are W 2550
determined as shown in Table IV.
ct
0
1700
850 T
I
TABLE IV o
Initial Cluster Centers 1 1441 2881 4321 5761 7201 8641
Cluster Time
1 2
Fig 4. Load hourly khoozestan network 2001
LOAD2001 798 3735
Figure 5 shows that Khozestan region requires base load
In the second step, the algorithm is converged after 5 stations for 35.54% of the time during a year. 47.24% of the
iterations. The results associated with each iteration are time period, this region requires generating units appropriate
presented in table V. After convergence, final clusters are for the intermediate load. Finally the system should have
obtained as shown in table VI. The values lower than the sufficient peak load stations for 17.22% of the year.
minimum cluster; here 1709 MW, are considered as base load It can be seen from this figure that Khozestan region needs
while the values upper than the maximum cluster; here 2932 base load stations for 35.54% of time compared to that of the
MW, are considered to be the peak load. The distance whole country which was 27.45%; i.e. about 7% more. This
between the peak and base load is the intermediate load as indicates that a region with the hot weather climate requires
shown in Figure 4. more base load stations.

4000
Peak load
TABLE V 3500
17.22%
Iteration History 3000
Change in Cluster Centers 2500 Intermediat load=47.24%
Iteration 1 2 2000
ct
1 895.787 833.085 1500
2 9.344 17.982 1000 Base load

3 3.808 7.204 500 35.54%

4 1.917 3.607
5 .427 .802 time 1 1441 2881 4321 5761 7201 8641

Fig 5. LDC khozestan network 2001

IV. CONCLUSIONS
TABLE VI
Final Cluster Centers A new statistical approach is presented in this paper to
calculate the three main parts of a system load demand; base,
intermediate and peak-load using a cluster analysis. The
cluster analysis is one of the statistical methods in data
categorizing. The main advantage of the proposed technique
is that it can be applied to situations in which LDC or system
load factor varies. The applicability of the proposed technique
is illustrated by determining base, intermediate and peak-load
for two different case studies. The results are presented and
compared for the two cases. The results presented indicate
that regions with the hot weather climate require more base
load stations.

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Financial support provided by Khozestan Electric Regional
Company is gratefully acknowledged.
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[5] Davis, M.W.a, Gifford. A.H and Krupa. T.J, "Micro turbines-an
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[8] Shwehdi. M.H, Hughes. C.M, Quasem. M.A, "Base load fuel
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5
VII.
VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
A. Salimi Beni was born in Iran. Obtained B.Sc. and
M.Sc. degrees in statistics from Shahid Beheshti
university and Amir Kabir university (poly technique
of Tehran) in 1998 and 2002 respectively. Worked in
Iran Grid Management Company (IGMC) in the
;_
m1111_
department of load forecasting where he conducted
research in the area of load forecasting.
M. Fotuhi-Firuzabad (IEEE Senior Member, 99) was
born in Iran. Obtained B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in
electrical engineering from Sharif university of
technology and Tehran university in 1986 and 1989
respectively and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the university of Saskatchewan in
1993 and 1997 respectively. Dr. Fotuhi-Firuzabad
worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of
electrical engineering, university of Saskatchewan
from Jan. 1998 to Sept. 2000 and from Sept. 2001 to Sept. 2002 where he
conducted research in the area of power system reliability. He worked as an
assistant professor in the same department from Sept. 2000 to Sept. 2001.
Presently he is an associate professor and head of the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Sharif University of technology, Tehran, Iran.
Davood Farrokhzad was born in 1963 in Tehran, Iran.
He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering
and M.Sc. degree in industrial engineering from Sharif
University of Technology, in 1990 and 1996
respectively. He received his PHD degree in industrial
engineering from Sharif University of Technology in
2001. He has been working in Iran Power Generation
and Transmission Company (TAVANIR) for about ten
years and has been responsible for power system planning and reliability
evaluations. In addition he has been engaged in hydro- thermal system studies
for Iran Ministry of Energy. His current research interests are in application of
optimization methods to power system planning and operation problems as
well as in simulation techniques for stochastic modeling of power system
reliability.
S. J. Alemohammad was born in Iran. Obtained his B.Sc. degree in physics
from Tehran University in 1979. Presently he is manager of research and
planning office in Khozestan electric regional company.