IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO.
1, FEBRUARY 2003
Customer Characterization Options for Improving
the Tariff Offer
Gianfranco Chicco, Member, IEEE, Roberto Napoli, Member, IEEE, Petru Postolache, Member, IEEE,
Mircea Scutariu, Member, IEEE, and Cornel Toader, Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper deals with the classification of electricity
customers on the basis of their electrical behavior. Starting from
an extensive field measurement-based database of customer daily
load diagrams, we searched for the most appropriate indices or sets
of indices to be used for customer classification. We propose two
original measures to quantify the degree of adequacy of each index.
Using the indices as distinguishing features, we adopt an automatic
clustering algorithm to form customer classes. Each customer class
is then represented by its load profile. We use the load profiles to
study the margins left to a distribution company for fixing dedi-
cated tariffs to each customer class. We take into account new de-
grees of freedom available in the competitive electricity markets,
which increase flexibility in the tariff definition under imposed rev-
enue caps. Results of a case study performed on a set of customers
of a large distribution company are presented.
Index Terms—Clustering, electricity markets, customer classes,
load curve indices, load diagrams.
I. INTRODUCTION
A FTER the introduction of electricity market liberalization,
the distribution business has been given a greater degree of
freedom in fixing tariff rates, respecting a set of regulatory rules
and possible revenue caps. The distribution companies are now
playing in a profit-oriented context and are interested in devel-
oping suitable market strategies for tariff formulation. Detailed
knowledge of the behavior of supplied customers is thus essen-
tial for designing specific tariff options, in which the tariff rates
are in line with the effective use of electricity from the various
types of customers. As such, adequate information on the con-
sumption patterns of electricity customers represents a major
asset. Customer perception and satisfaction issues [1] can also
be taken into account when fixing tariff rates.
Customer characterizations can also be used for an integrated
planning system, by considering the load-management alterna-
tives that can be implemented to effectively meet the system
demand.
Information on customer consumption patterns is available
by means of daily load diagrams, which were extensively used
for years. However, traditionally the regulators used some non-
electric indicators such as the type of activity or commercial
Manuscript received February 11, 2002; revised July 5, 2002.
G. Chicco and R. Napoli are with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica
Industriale, Politecnico di Torino, Torino I-10129, Italy (e-mail: gian-
franco.chicco@polito.it; roberto.napoli@polito.it).
M. Scutariu is with Electrica Muntenia Sud Distribution and Supply Com-
pany, RO-782091, Romania (e-mail: mscut@sdb.ro).
P. Postolache and C. Toader are with the University Politehnica of
Bucharest, Power Engineering Faculty, Bucharest RO-79590, Romania
(e-mail: petru@el.poweng.pub.ro).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2002.807085
0085-8950/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
381
codes for developing electricity tariffs. In the liberalized elec-
tricity market scenario, sellers may formulate their own char-
acterizations of customers by defining customer classes on the
basis of the electrical behavior of customers. The tariff offer
may then be formulated by identifying the contribution of the
different customer classes to the total aggregated load.
Efforts are in progress to investigate the tools used to form
customer classes. Load profiling [2], [3] has emerged as one of
the most suitable methods to deal with the effective shape of
customers’ load diagrams. Different techniques, ranging from
clustering methods to neural networks and data mining, have
been used for load profile modeling. Details can be found in [4]
and [5].
In the systematic approach used in the U.K. [2], [3], several
subclasses are defined within each major class of customers
and each of them is assigned a different tariff. This approach is
backed by some extensive field measurement campaigns that
span over two decades. A similar approach has been imple-
mented in Taipei [6], together with a comprehensive survey
system that makes use of the stratified sampling concept [7].
Indices derived from representative daily load curves have been
employed in [8], and their fitting within some clearly stated
domains of variation certifies the inclusion of the consumer in
a given customer class.
This paper presents a comprehensive approach aimed at
customer load pattern characterizations and at developing im-
proved tariff offers of possible interest for distribution and retail
market players. The core of such an approach is represented
by its ability to organize the customer set into well-defined
and nonoverlapping customer classes. For this purpose, we
consider several options, extending the approaches reported in
[8] and [9]. We make a distinction between a priori indices (i.e.,
contractual and historical data stored in the utility database,
and field indices) extracted from measurement campaigns. In
Section II, we discuss the use of a priori and field indices and
propose some original measures for evaluating the adequacy
of selected indices. Furthermore, we investigate the possible
use of a composite index for the customer’s load diagram
characterizations by using a linear combination of field indices.
We use an automatic clustering procedure, based on the
model shown in [10], to organize customers into a set of auto-
matically formed customer classes so that customers exhibiting
sufficiently similar electrical behavior are grouped together.
The details are given in Section III. We then define a repre-
sentative customer for each customer class. The load diagram
associated to each representative customer is the load profile of
the corresponding customer class. An example of computation
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of the load profiles based on actual data on customers supplied
by a large distribution company is presented in Section IV.
In Section V, we investigate the possibility of a tariff diversi-
fication for the various customer classes, by using the load pro-
files in order to provide suggestions on possible market strate-
gies seen from the distribution and retail market players point of
view. A case study is presented to compute the margins left to a
distribution company in setting up dedicated tariffs for different
classes of customers, according to a set of general rules and to
specified revenue caps. Section VI contains the concluding re-
marks.
II. INDICES TO CHARACTERIZE THE ELECTRICITY
CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIOR
Grouping electricity customers into classes generally requires
defining and using specific indices related to daily load dia-
grams. These indices are calculated by using information con-
tained in the utility database and/or obtained from extensive
field measurement campaigns.
Let be the set of data characterizing
a load diagram, and let be the set
of load diagrams for a selected group of customers. We con-
sider a classification process operating the partitioning of the
initial customers into customer classes corresponding to
the subsets . Each subset contains load diagrams,
for . Each customer is allocated to a single cus-
tomer class. For each customer class, the representative load di-
agram is derived from the load diagrams in by an aver-
aging process, resulting in the set
of class representative load diagrams.
Customer classification should somehow be related to the
shape of the load diagram. It is thus useful to define
a) the distance between two load diagrams (e.g., between two
members of the set )
(1)
b) the distance between a representative load diagram
and the subset , defined as the geometric mean of the
distances between and each member of
(2)
c) the distance between a load diagram and a flat
load diagram with constant load level
(3)
When this distance is minimal, the flat profile is the best
interpolation of in the squared mean error sense.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2003
d) the infraset mean distance, defined as the geometric mean
of the distances over the members of the set
(4)
Implicit or explicit use of these distances and of the related
indices in classifying customers may vary from country to
country. Some indications are reported below.
A. A Priori Indices
A priori indices are of a contractual nature (i.e., type of
economic activity, contracted power, supply voltage level, etc.).
Customers with different indices may have different tariffs.
These types of indices are totally unrelated to the load diagram,
leading to some inconsistencies in customer classification, as
shown in Section IV.
B. Field Indices
Field indices are derived from the daily load diagrams. Sev-
eral indices have been proposed, including [8] the nonunifor-
mity coefficient , the fill-up coefficient
, the modulation coefficient at peak hours
, and the modulation coefficient at offpeak hours
, where ( is the minimum
(maximum) power demand of the representative day, is the
average power demand, based on the ratio of the electricity con-
sumption to the monthly hours, ( ) is the average
power demand during daily peak (offpeak) hours. The modu-
lation coefficients at peak and offpeak hours are available for
most customers and have been used for classification, with a
two-step procedure: a preliminary classification with ,
followed by an inner partition with the index. This ap-
proach resulted as being well tuned to the French system, but
our experience showed that it does not appear generally appli-
cable to other situations.
At this point, we consider another approach, based on unsu-
pervised clustering of the daily load diagrams using a selected
set of discriminating indices. This approach was applied to
customers, whose daily load diagrams resulted from an exten-
sive measurement campaign, after detection and elimination of
bad data [8], [9]. Starting from the hourly values of the daily load
diagrams, several discriminating indices were considered. For
each customer , the expected load diagram was
identified and then normalized to its expected peak power, re-
sulting in the representative load diagram . Use of expected
values avoids the effects of occasional behavior.
A set of normalized shape indicators (Table I), each of them
belonging to the (0,1) range, was used as index vector
. The choice of the indicators requires intuition
and investigation and is the basis for running the clustering pro-
cedure, as detailed in Section III.
C. Index Adequacy
We now need to define a performance measure to rank the
possible indices. We use to denote the generic vector of in-
dices, composed of one or more indices or a function of them.
CHICCO et al.: CUSTOMER CHARACTERIZATION OPTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE TARIFF OFFER
TABLE I
NORMALIZED SHAPE INDICATORS FOR CHARACTERIZING THE LOAD CURVES
Conceptually, the best is the one leading to well-separated
classes (distinct class representative load diagrams) and com-
pact ones (the load diagrams of the customers included in each
class are very similar to their representative ones). We assume
the clustering process performed by using the index vector has
formed customer classes, the subsets with the load dia-
gram partitioning for and the set of the class
representative load diagrams.
We introduce two performance measures
a) the mean index adequacy ( ) sented sequentially. If the minimum weighted Euclidean dis-
(5)
b) the clustering dispersion indicator (CDI), depending on
the distance between the load diagrams in the same cluster
and on the distance between the class representative load
diagrams
(6)
Index vectors with smaller and values are con-
sidered to have sharper discriminating properties.
D. Composite Index
Each index has some portion of discriminating power. To
avoid loss or overlapping of information, we may consider var-
ious combinations of single indices. We consider indices
extracted from the initial ones and build
the single composite index as the linear combination
(7)
where . Identification of a suitable coeffi-
cient vector is not immediate and can be justified on the basis
of extensive testing. We searched for the coefficient vector
that minimizes the sum of the square distances of the composite
index to the members of the customer population
(8)
383
After performing the clustering process with , the com-
posite index performance is evaluated by using (5) and (6).
The approaches presented in this section are discussed in Sec-
tion IV on an illustrative case study.
III. AUTOMATIC CLUSTERING PROCEDURE
An automatic clustering procedure has been used to group the
load diagrams on the basis of their distinguishing features. The
procedure is based on the one proposed in [10], which does not
require initialization of the number of clusters and computes the
cluster centers automatically. The Euclidean metric used in the
original algorithm has been modified by introducing for each
index a weighting factor , where is the variance of
the th index computed from all of the load diagrams in the
initial population and is the average value of the variance
for . As such, the impact of the indices having
a high variance is amplified in the computation of the weighted
Euclidean distance.
The clustering procedure (Fig. 1) is composed of several cy-
cles . The first cycle ( ) sets the number
of clusters and the number of patterns belonging to each
cluster by using a “follow the leader” approach
depending on a distance threshold . All load patterns are pre-
tance from the center of an existing cluster is lower than , each
pattern is assigned to the closest cluster and the cluster center
is updated; otherwise, the pattern
defines the center of a new cluster. The successive cycles ( )
may change the number of clusters by reassigning the patterns
to the closest cluster and updating the cluster centers until the
number of patterns changing clusters in a single cycle is zero.
At the th cycle, the th customer belongs to the cluster .
The maximum number of cycles should be set to a number
large enough to allow for clustering stabilization before the th
cycle.
IV. CASE STUDY ON THE CHARACTERISTIC INDICES
In order to assess the adequacy of the indices discussed in
Section II, a detailed study has been performed on several cus-
tomers of a distribution system exhibiting various daily load di-
agrams. The customer set is based on a population of
nonresidential customers supplied by the Romanian national
electricity distribution company (Table II). For each customer
, the expected load diagram of weekdays was
built by averaging the load diagram data related to field mea-
surements for all the weekdays over a period of three weeks in
the winter season of 1999. The vector was computed for
each load diagram.
A. A Priori Indices
The policies of several distribution companies define cus-
tomer classes by using contractual data, including the type of
customer according to a predetermined industrial classification
(i.e., type of activity, tariff type assigned to the customer, and
voltage level at the supply point).
We searched for a possible correlation between contractual
data and resultant clusters. For the type of activity (Table III),
384
Fig. 1. Flowchart of the clustering procedure.
the results clearly show a poor correlation between main clusters
and type of activity. Similar results have been obtained for other
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2003
TABLE II
STRUCTURE OF THE CUSTOMER SET UNDER SURVEY
TABLE III
NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS OF DIFFERENT ACTIVITY TYPE WITHIN
EACH CLUSTER
contractual data. As such, grouping the customers on the basis
of contractual data is highly ineffective for the purpose of char-
acterizing the behavior of customers in terms of their electricity
consumption.
B. Field Indices
The characteristics of the clustering procedure illustrated in
Section III have been tested for different distance thresholds,
using the individual normalized shape indicators and their whole
package. Fig. 2 clearly shows the reduction in the number of
clusters by using the individual normalized shape indicators,
which tend to level the differences between the consumption
patterns. This reduction corresponds to a decreased accuracy of
the classification process, quantified in higher values of the pro-
posed measure (Fig. 3).
C. Composite Index
According to the procedure described in Section II, we looked
after the construction of a composite index and the evaluation of
its ability to improve the discriminatory property of the single
indices [11]. We created the hierarchy that allows the selection
CHICCO et al.: CUSTOMER CHARACTERIZATION OPTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE TARIFF OFFER
Fig. 2. Number of clusters in function of the distance threshold.
Fig. 3. MIA evolution depending on the resulting number of clusters.
TABLE IV
MIA AND CDI VALUES FOR DIFFERENT NUMBER OF RESULTING CLUSTERS
of indices to be included in the composite index (2) by checking
out the performance of each individual normalized shape indi-
cator. Two options emerged (Fig. 3): the composite indices
created by using and with all of the indices
taken into account. The performance of
these composite indices emerges from the comparison between
the , on the one hand, and on the other (Table IV),
obtained by using the all-indices package , the individual in-
dices, and the two composite indices, respectively. For nine and
seven clusters, considered to be an adequate choice as a final
number of classes for nonresidential customers, the improve-
ment in the values reaches approximately 7–9%, while
the average improvement in the values goes up to 16%.
It can also be noticed that actually amplifies the discrep-
ancies among various individual indicators or packages and, as
such, it may better assist the process of index adequacy eval-
uation. In addition, using the composite indices leads to lower
385
Fig. 4. Cluster representative load diagrams using the normalized shape
indicators (uncommon behavior clusters were skipped).
Fig. 5. Cluster representative load diagrams by using the composite index c
(uncommon behavior clusters were skipped).
values of and , namely, Fig. 4 to a good discrimina-
tion between the representative load diagrams. Fig. 5 shows the
results for .
The indices used in the definition of the composite index may
vary from company to company. The determination of the co-
efficients is sensitive to the selection of customers
in the representative set for the surveyed population. As such, a
careful design of the selection of representative samples within
the overall customer population is required. The application of
techniques such as the stratified sampling [6], [7], [12] may be
helpful for this purpose.
V. DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TARIFF STRUCTURES
The effectiveness of the distinction between customer classes
spurs on the association of a specified tariff to each customer
class. We show how the results of the above customer classifi-
cation could be used to modify existing tariffs by properly fixing
rate coefficients for each customer class. Currently, for elec-
tricity billing, the various packages of tariffs can be generally
split into single rate (independent of the instant of consump-
tion) and multiple rate (with different rates for peak hours and
offpeak periods). We use a simple illustrative case study, con-
sidering a real-life case where customers are billed according
to three different tariffs, namely A, B, and D. Tariffs A and B
are multiple rate type with rates differentiated on the basis of
the hour of consumption, while D is single rate. Tariffs A and
B differ for additional taxes on the requested power only. In our
study, these taxes have been neglected since they do not signifi-
cantly relate to the way customers consume power. For the sake
of simplicity, we assume that the rate components independent
386
Fig. 6. Typical energy price variations for existing class A and B tariffs and
=
the proposed one (m.u. monetary unit).
of energy provision are constant, and we focus on the variation
of energy rates only. It is assumed that we operate under revenue
caps, for which the total revenues with the new tariff should not
exceed the total revenues with the initial tariff. These hypotheses
can be easily removed to build more general cases.
We consider the customer class defined by cluster 6 in Fig. 5,
with 33 members, obtained by using the composite index .
According to distribution company policy, its customers were
initially billed on the basis of their type of activity. This ap-
proach, as shown in Table III, has little to do with the actual
consumption pattern. We focused our efforts on determining the
margins left to the distribution company to readjust the tariff
offer based on the new customer classification results.
Before reclassification, customers belonging to the new cus-
tomer class were billed according to tariff A (21 subjects), tariff
B (seven subjects), and tariff D (five subjects). We calculated the
total revenues with the existing tariffs for a period of one day.
We now intend to offer the same multiple-rate tariff to all of
them. Therefore, we assume a two-rate tariff with rate in the
period from to and rate elsewhere (Fig. 6). By fixing
one of the rate coefficients or , it is possible to calculate
the other one by using the load profile of the customer class,
under the hypothesis that the total revenues obtained from this
class are the same as the total revenues computed with the ex-
isting tariffs. Fig. 7 presents the locus of the resulting
pairs, when different time periods define the peak hours. This
locus is the upper boundary of the region inside which the dis-
tribution company has some degree of freedom to modulate the
rate coefficients without increasing its revenues for the same set
of customers. This is a “static” view of the assessment of pos-
sible revenues, used to formally respect the revenue cap con-
straint. A more “dynamic” view makes the choice of new price
coefficients also dependent on the forecast effects of the pos-
sible new tariff structure on customers’ load patterns. In such
a way, a tariff-driven variation of load patterns with respect to
the load profiles used in the analysis may increase the profits of
the market player. These profits can be assessed for each of the
pairs by modifying the load profiles to reproduce some
expected tariff-induced global effects, giving some insights on
the adoption of a profit-effective market strategy. Results on this
issue and on the comparative analysis of the tariff offers will be
reported in a future paper.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2003
Fig. 7. Locus of the rate coefficients for constant total revenues.
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this paper, we used an efficient clustering technique to
classify electricity customers on the basis of their electricity
consumption patterns. We investigated the adequacy of various
indices for classifying customers, by means of two originally
developed accuracy measures ( and ) and checked
the effectiveness of new composite indices. We provided an ex-
ample of misleading billing practices due to poor correlation be-
tween discriminatory factors and actual load patterns. Finally,
we showed an example of defining new tariffs for each of the
new customer classes under imposed revenue caps.
Suitable metering technologies are required for implementing
the proposed approach. The digital-signal-processing-based
technology is proposing a new generation of interval meters,
with extended capabilities of data management and com-
munication, and with the possibility of remote reading from
a control center. In many countries, this new technology is
rapidly entering the electricity market and will greatly improve
consumer-supplier interaction.
The proposed approach is generally applicable to any set of
customers. However, at this stage of liberalization process in
most European electricity markets, industrial, and commercial
customers do not represent a major share of the customer pop-
ulation of distribution companies, compared with residential
customers.
A preliminary partitioning of customers into residential and
nonresidential could be useful, in order to avoid the explicit
study of the electricity consumption of single residential cus-
tomers, which strongly depends on social and behavioral data
of the consumers [13]. In addition, the adoption of an electricity
pattern-based classification of residential customers would re-
quire replacement of the existing metering units with new in-
terval meters. This replacement is already in progress in some
countries (e.g., in Italy) and will take some years, running in
parallel with the consolidation of the electricity markets. As
such, in a first application, the proposed approach could be lim-
ited to nonresidential customers, reducing the size of the cus-
tomer set. In this case, residential customers could be consid-
ered with their aggregated loads, to take advantage of the sim-
ilarities among the shape of residential aggregated loads seen
from supply substations.
CHICCO et al.: CUSTOMER CHARACTERIZATION OPTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE TARIFF OFFER
Any mechanism used to form customer classes and define tar-
iffs must be clear, transparent, and easily understood, but flex-
ible enough to follow customer load pattern variations induced
by dedicated tariffs.
In order to apply the proposed approach to tariff formulation,
a possible new scenario of the interactions between customer
and supplier could be
a) the customer contacts the supplier, states its type of ac-
tivity, and is assigned/free to choose a starting tariff;
b) the supplier monitors the customer for a specified period
(e.g., three to six months) and establishes a reference load
pattern;
c) the supplier fits the reference pattern to one of the existing
customer classes and identifies the appropriate tariff;
d) the supplier periodically monitors the daily load curves
of all customers, updates reference patterns and customer
classes by automatic clustering, and adjusts the tariffs ap-
plied to each customer class to maximize its foreseeable
profits, respecting the imposed revenue caps.
The proposed mechanism for tariff formulation overrides the
concept of a unique tariff for the same kind of activity, which
is adopted in many national regulations. As such, its practical
implementation requires the existence of a legal framework to
accommodate changes in contractual provisions.
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Gianfranco Chicco (M’98) was born in Carmagnola, Italy, on April 22, 1963.
He received the electrotechnical engineering degree from the Politecnico di
Torino, Italy, in 1987, and received the Ph.D. degree in electrotechnical engi-
neering, Italy, in 1992.
Currently, he is Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, where
he has been since 1995. In 1999, he visited the University of Illinois at Ur-
bana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. His research activities include power systems
and distribution systems analysis, competitive electricity markets, load man-
agement, artificial intelligence application, and power quality.
Roberto Napoli (M’74) was born in Palermo, Italy, on June 11, 1945. He re-
ceived the electrotechnical engineering degree from Politecnico di Torino, Italy,
in 1969.
Currently, he is Full Professor of Electric Power Systems at the Politecnico
di Torino, Italy, Chairman of the Italian Electric Power Systems National Re-
search staff, and President of the Academic Planning Councils at the Politecnico
di Torino. His research activities include power system analysis, planning and
control, artificial intelligence applications, and competitive electricity markets.
Dr. Napoli is a member of AEI and CIGRE.
Petru Postolache (M’01) was born in Romania in 1940. He received the M.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from University Politech-
nica of Bucharest (UPB), Romania.
Currently, he is Professor with the Electric Engineering Department at UPB,
where he has been since 1966. From 1974 to 1978, he was a Lecturer in electrical
engineering at the National University of Zaire at Bukavu and Kinshasa. His
main research interests include electrical energy efficiency, power distribution,
electrical disturbances and power quality analysis.
Dr. Postolache is a member of the National Romanian Committee of CIRED
and is the chairman of its SC4.
Mircea Scutariu (M’99) was born in Resita, Romania, on July 7, 1966. He re-
ceived the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electric power engineering from Univer-
sity Politechnica of Bucharest (UPB), Romania in 1990 and 1997, respectively.
Currently, he is the head of the Technical Bureau of the Electrica Muntenia
Sud Distribution Company, Bucharest, Romania, and his assignments involve
technical support related to all electricity distribution issues. He has also been
with the Research and Modernizing Institute for Energetics, the Electric Power
Department at UPB. His areas of scientific interest cover the probabilistic
methods applied to power systems, power quality, load management, and
distribution network optimization.
Cornel Toader (M’01) was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1945. He received
the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University Politechnica from Bucharest
(UPB) in 1968 and 1988, respectively.
Currently, he is Full Professor of Electric Energy Utilization and Head of
the Electric Energy Utilization Group of the Electric Power Engineering De-
partment. He has also been involved in the fields of electric power systems and
electricity transmission and distribution with UPB. His research interests in-
clude power quality issues analysis, network modeling, and electrotechnologies.