Elexon were asked to develop a new tool so planned Market Wide Half Hourly load shapes could be compared to existing NHH load profiles on a daily, yearly, and Load Shape Category (LSC) basis.
Data Input
To create this, Elexon asked Suppliers to provide actual smart metered half hourly data from domestic customers (Profile Class 1 and 2), split by Grid Supply Point (GSP) Group.
This data covered a year period (from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024), and only data that contained volumes in every settlement period were used. Using this sample of over 100,000 sites, an average was created for each settlement day and period for each of the two Profile Classes and all 14 GSP Groups.
To avoid any spurious data from impacting the analysis, we set a minimum sample size. Where the sample size was below this limit, the load shape defaulted to an average across all GSP Groups for that particular LSC. As such, you will see some Profile Class 2 load shapes being identical for a small number of GSP groups.
The ‘national’ load shape was calculated using the NHH profiling for the same period (1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024), and is shown in bold to differentiate it from the regional profiles.
Model Output
The model is interactive, so you can select one, or many, GSP Groups for comparison, as well as selecting whether you are interested in domestic standard (PC1) or domestic multi-rate (PC2) profiles.
Also, you can select a particular date, date range, or scroll through the year to see how the profiles differ between regions, as well as comparing the average or sum of the load shapes.
The second tab lets you see the split between peak and off-peak metered volumes, and so is only relevant for Profile Class 2. By selecting a specific GSP Group, the graph on the left will show you the total profile whilst the graph on the right will show you how this volume is split between peak and off-peak registers.
Initial Findings
Whilst there are some differences between the regional load shapes and the existing load profiles, we do not believe the variation to be significant. This is more prominent in Profile Class 2 load profiles, where the existing load profile is slightly higher than the load shapes in the Summer months.
The actual smart meter sample data does show variations between GSP Groups, especially for Profile Class 2, and a number of half hourly and daily outliers identified as part of the modelling. However, these tended to LSC where the smart meter sample size was smaller.
Please note Elexon do intend to make the actual smart meter input data available in the near future, so users can use this for their own analysis.