Forecasting Demand Flexibility of Aggregated Residential Load Using Smart Meter Data

Demand decomposition (disaggregation) presents the process of assessing time-varying participation of different load categories within the total active or reactive load. Information on load composition is highly beneficial for different demand side management applications. In order to decompose total forecasted load of aggregated households where only some are monitored by smart meters (SMs) with submetering capabilities, a two-level methodology is proposed. At the first level, load disaggregation of the load monitored by SMs is done based on measurements of power consumed by each home appliance, and at the second, the disaggregation of the total forecasted load is performed using artificial neural network. This paper investigates the required percentage of users in an aggregation that should be equipped with a SM with submetering capabilities in order to forecast (within certain confidence level) the load composition of the overall aggregated demand. The methodology was first tested on a UK statistics-based load model, and then validated on a real pilot site's consumption dataset. The results show that even with 5% SM coverage, one can forecast, with high confidence, the composition of the load at the substation (aggregation point). In other words, there is no techno-economic justification for submetering technologies to be installed at every user's premise; a limited installation of such devices would suffice.