Monitoring Electricity Demand Synchronization Using Copulas

Synchronization of the behavior of residential consumers, for example during crises, can lead to overloads in electric power grids. This holds especially for distribution grids, where the electrical infrastructure is not designed for the simultaneous high consumption of all households. Therefore, the monitoring and detection of (upcoming) synchronization trends is important. It is the basis for any countermeasures. We propose to model the dependency structure of consumer demands with a Gaussian copula using its correlation parameter as an indicator for synchronization. We then analyze the probability distribution of the aggregated load depending on the synchronization indicator. This allows us to infer the synchronization parameter from load measurements in real-time using a Bayesian approach. In simulation experiments with realistic household consumption distributions, we show how increased synchronization can be detected.