Demand forecasting: (Electricity)

Multivariable complexity, with Seasonality and trend

Aashutosh Soni
Power Management Professional

Electricity is a symbol of development, as it’s always been said, but in my view, this phrase is
backed with many assumptions. The assumptions include that there is proper management of the
electric demand, loss less power distribution system exist, transmission lines are not congested,
frequency of power supply is maintained within limits and generation units are working to their
maximum efficiency. What drives this in my mind is not the stakeholders wish to achieve all the
pies mentioned above, but the cause of not achieving it.

Some issues are by their nature could be reduced to an extent, but could not be resolved fully. A
loss less power distribution system is nearly impossible, if we include the technical losses in it.
This will be contrary to the rules of nature which is supported with phenomenon like friction and
inertia. If I talk about transmission lines, they are limited for their capacity on the investment
done till date. Various factors affect new corridor construction and capacity enhancement and
thus the interruption resolution takes time. Limit as I talked is due to the characteristic of assets
in transmission like thermal limits, transient stability limit, voltage limit, short circuit current
limit and others. You can ask me more on how the frequency change affects the quality of supply
and why the generation units are not working at their maximum efficiencies.

All the tangible assets have their constraints of working but what about the demand. I can say
there are common factors that may affect both demand as well as working of physical assets.
What is it that affect the amount of power required for consumption at a particular period of time
if we ignore small deviations? I was working on some rudimentary methods to get a hold on it
and I got it’s all about schedules and patterns that always been followed. It’s a list of factors
which even adding more that affect the demand and a multivariate analysis could do some magic.
The reason of the blog is to point out that we are advancing in solving complex computation
every day. It’s the era of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks that is
far better than an excel sheet of limited constraint and single objective. The more the factors we
add, more we reach to the accuracy. This will also help in reducing issues mentioned above and
some of them way faster like real time after all it’s the demand which needs to be served.

After all it's the demand which needs to be served.