Construction of the hourly load curves and detecting the annual peak load of future Syrian electric power demand using bottom-up approach

A comprehensive analysis has been carried out to calculate the hourly electricity demand and the load factors (LF) of the various consumption sectors, construct the load duration curves (LDC) and predict the annual peak load at final and secondary levels with the ultimate task of formulating the expansion plan of future generation system. For this purpose the actual hourly electricity demand (distributed by day types and seasons) of selected typical clients representing the consumption behaviour of household, service, transport and industry sectors in the base year have been collected and evaluated. Starting from these data and using the reference scenario results of future electricity demand projections – in term of annual demand and relative shares of consumption sectors, the future annual LDC’s and the total peak load for the next three decades have been constructed using the bottom-up approach MAED_EL. The results indicate that the current residential behaviour of Syrian power system will shift in the reference scenario more and more to the typical industry behaviour characterized by higher load factors. In the study period 1999–2030 the LF will increase from 0.64 to 0.71 and the peak load will grow annually at average rates of 5.2% in the reference scenario.