Initial results of international survey on industrial practice on power system load modelling conducted by CIGRE WG C4.605

Although load modelling is a mature and reasonably well explored area there is a renewed interest in industry and academia for this important topic. This interest is particularly fuelled by the appearance of new, non-conventional types of loads (power electronics based or inter-faced through power electronics) and requirements to operate modern electric power networks with increased penetration of non-conventional types (mostly stochastic) of generation and power electronic devices in a safe and secure manner. As a response to this renewed interest a CIGRE working group C4.605 "Modelling and aggregation of loads in flexible power net-works" was established in February 2010. The load models and parameters currently used by utilities and system operators for power system studies are generally not in public domain and there is a level of uncertainty regarding industry acceptance of research efforts in this area. As one of the first tasks of the CIGRE WG C4.605, a comprehensive questionnaire on load modelling practices in industry was devel-oped to conduct an international survey on utility practices regarding load modelling. The questionnaire was dispatched during the summer of 2010 to more than 150 utilities and sys-tem operators in 74 countries on five continents. This paper summarizes some of the initial findings of the survey. The result of the survey shows prevailing practice around the world regarding type of load model used in static and dynamic system studies. The survey also helps us to comprehend current level of load model-ling effort and load models used in system studies by the utilities and system operators around the world.