The Proof is in Distribution Planning

Providing reliable electrical service has always been a key focus for distribution planners. Traditional forecasting and planning approaches have historically used average load growth over wide areas, basic analysis of weather impacts, and little, if any, attention to changing economic, resource deployment, or network topology changes. Exactly how resources and loads operate, interact, and provide power and reliability within the service territory must be analyzed in greater detail to adequately plan for, and integrate emerging distributed resources with changing load trends. And with emerging distributed energy resources (e.g., solar, storage, electric vehicles, demand response), the diversity of forecasted peaks on the T&D systems are changing in a significant way. These supply-side and demand-side resources emerging at the grid edge present new operational challenges which require more detailed and granular planning tools. LoadSEER, developed by Integral Analytics, is a spatial load forecasting tool which is used by electric distribution system planners to predict load and power changes, where on the grid the loads will occur, how DG changes the load shape, and when it must be supplied. LoadSEER spatial load forecasts address both short-term circuit trends and long-term grid expansion, while remaining consistent with the overall corporate load forecast for energy and peak demand. The resulting forecast provides system planners with substation, circuit and small-area resolution timeseries load growth and load shape changes.