Variability in electricity consumption by category of consumer: the impact on electricity load profiles

TL;DR

This study analyzes how different consumer categories, especially heat pumps and electric vehicles, impact electricity load profiles and peak consumption, informing future grid planning and flexibility assessment.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of consumer category impacts on load profiles using extensive Danish household data, highlighting heat pumps' influence on peak loads.

Findings

Heat pumps increase peak consumption by 14% during peak hours.

Electric vehicles show 5-17% flexibility with coincidence factors.

Heat pumps are mainly baseload, unlike electric vehicles.

Abstract

Residential electrification of transport and heat is changing consumption and its characteristics significantly. Previous studies have demonstrated the impact of socio-techno-economic determinants on residential consumption. However, they fail to capture the distributional characteristics of such consumer groups, which impact network planning and flexibility assessment. Using actual residential electricity consumption profile data for 720,000 households in Denmark, we demonstrate that heat pumps are more likely to influence aggregated peak consumption than electric vehicles. At the same time, other socio-economic factors, such as occupancy, dwelling area and income, show little impact. Comparing the extrapolation of a comprehensive rollout of heat pumps or electric vehicles indicates that the most common consumer category deploying heat pumps has 14% more maximum consumption during peak load hours, 46% more average consumption and twice the higher median compared to households owning an electric vehicle. Electric vehicle show already flexibility with coincidence factors that ranges between 5-15% with a maximum of 17% whereas heat pumps are mostly baseload. The detailed and holistic outcomes of this study support flexibility assessment and grid planning in future studies but also the operation of flexible technologies.