Electric energy customer characterisation for developing dedicated market strategies

This paper deals with the classification of the electricity customers for building up dedicated tariff structures based on their electrical behaviour. Starting from the results of field measurements, the load patterns are characterised by a set of indices representing the shape of the load curves. An automatic clustering algorithm is used to form the customer classes. Each customer class is then represented by its load profile. The load profiles are used to study the margins left to the utility company for fixing dedicated tariffs to each customer class, according to new rules introduced in the liberalised electricity market, which increase the flexibility in the definition of the tariffs under imposed price caps. Results of a case study performed on a set of customers of a distribution company are presented.