Convolutional Autoencoder Based Feature Extraction and Clustering for Customer Load Analysis

As the number of smart meters increases, compression of metering data becomes essential for data transmission, storing and processing perspectives. Specifically, feature extraction can be used for the compression of metering data and further be utilized for smart grid applications such as customer clustering. So far, there are many studies for compression and clustering based on daily load profiles. However, in order to account for long-term characteristics of electricity load, utilizing yearly load profiles (YLPs) is vital for customer load clustering and analysis. In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based YLP feature extraction that jointly captures daily and seasonal variations. By leveraging convolutional autoencoder (CAE), YLPs in 8,640-dimensional space are compressed to 100-dimensional vectors. We apply the proposed CAE framework to YLPs of 1,405 residential customers and verify that the proposed CAE outperforms other dimensionality reduction methods in terms of reconstruction errors, e.g., by 19-40%, or the compression ratio is increased by 130% or higher than other methods for the same reconstruction error. In addition, clustering analysis is performed on the encoded YLPs. Our results confirm that year-round characteristics are well captured during the clustering process and also clearly visualized with load images.