A flow-based model for conditional and probabilistic electricity consumption profile generation

Residential Load Profile (RLP) generation is critical for the operation and planning of distribution networks, especially as diverse low-carbon technologies (e.g., photovoltaic and electric vehicles) are increasingly adopted. This paper introduces a novel flow-based generative model, termed Full Convolutional Profile Flow (FCPFlow), uniquely designed for conditional and unconditional RLP generation. By introducing two new layers – the invertible linear layer and the invertible normalization layer – the proposed FCPFlow architecture shows three main advantages compared to traditional statistical and contemporary deep generative models: (1) it is well-suited for RLP generation under continuous conditions, such as varying weather and annual electricity consumption, (2) it demonstrates superior scalability in different datasets compared to traditional statistical models, and (3) it also demonstrates better modeling capabilities in capturing the complex correlation of RLPs compared with deep generative models.