standardlastprofile: BDEW Standard Load Profiles for Electricity

Description

Provides representative standard load profiles (SLPs) for electricity published by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft e.V.) in a tidy format. Covers the 1999 profiles — households (H0), commerce (G0–G6), and agriculture (L0–L2) — and the updated 2025 profiles (H25, G25, L25, P25, S25), which additionally represent households with photovoltaic systems and battery storage. Also provides an interface for generating a standard load profile over a user-defined date range. The 1999 data and methodology are described in VDEW (1999), "Repräsentative VDEW-Lastprofile", https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/1999_Repraesentative-VDEW-Lastprofile.pdf. The generation algorithm is described in VDEW (2000), "Anwendung der Repräsentativen VDEW-Lastprofile step-by-step", https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/2000131_Anwendung-repraesentativen_Lastprofile-Step-by-step.pdf. The 2025 profiles are described in BDEW (2025), "Standardlastprofile Strom", https://www.bdew.de/energie/standardlastprofile-strom/.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Markus Döring m4rkus.doering@gmail.com [copyright holder]

See Also

Useful links:

• https://github.com/flrd/standardlastprofile

• https://flrd.github.io/standardlastprofile/

• Report bugs at https://github.com/flrd/standardlastprofile/issues

Standard Load Profile Data for Electricity from BDEW

Description

Data about representative, standard load profiles for electricity from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft e.V.) in a tidy format.

Usage

slp

Format

A data.frame with 26,784 observations and 5 variables:

profile_id

character, identifier for load profile, see 'Details'

period

character, one of 'summer', 'winter', 'transition' for 1999 profiles; one of 'january' through 'december' for 2025 profiles

day

character, one of 'saturday', 'sunday', 'workday'

timestamp

character, format: %H:%M

watts

numeric, electric power in watts, normalised to 1,000 kWh/a

Details

There are 96 x 1/4h measurements of electrical power for each combination of profile_id, period and day, which we refer to as the "standard load profile".

In total there are 16 profile_id across two generations of profiles:

1999 profiles (based on analysis of 1,209 load profiles of low-voltage electricity consumers in Germany):

• Households: H0

• Commercial: G0, G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6

• Agriculture: L0, L1, L2

2025 profiles (updated profiles published by BDEW in 2025):

• Households: H25

• Commercial: G25

• Agriculture: L25

• Combination profile PV: P25

• Combination profile storage and PV: S25

The 2025 profiles use calendar months rather than seasons for the period column ('january' through 'december').

Call slp_info() for more information and examples.

Period definitions (1999 profiles):

• summer: May 15 to September 14

• winter: November 1 to March 20

• transition: March 21 to May 14, and September 15 to October 31

Day definitions:

• workday: Monday to Friday

• saturday: Saturdays; Dec 24th and Dec 31st are also treated as Saturdays unless they fall on a Sunday

• sunday: Sundays and all public holidays

Units and normalisation:

The source Excel file for the 1999 profiles stores values in watts (W), normalised to an annual consumption of 1,000 kWh/a. The source Excel file for the 2025 profiles stores values in kilowatt-hours (kWh) per 15-minute interval, normalised to 1,000,000 kWh/a. To keep the internal representation consistent and backwards compatible, all 2025 values have been converted to watts normalised to 1,000 kWh/a.

As a result, the watts column in both this dataset and the output of slp_generate() always represents average electric power in watts, normalised to 1,000 kWh/a. To convert to energy consumed per 15-minute interval in kWh, divide by 4 and by 1,000:

watts_to_kwh <- \(x) x / 4 / 1000

Source

https://www.bdew.de/energie/standardlastprofile-strom/

https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/Profile.zip

https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/1999_Repraesentative-VDEW-Lastprofile.pdf

Examples

head(slp)

Generate a Standard Load Profile for Electricity

Description

Generate a standard load profile in watts, normalised to an annual consumption of 1,000 kWh.

Usage

slp_generate(
  profile_id,
  start_date,
  end_date,
  holidays = NULL,
  state_code = deprecated()
)

Arguments

Details

In the German electricity market, a standard load profile is a representative pattern of electricity consumption used to forecast demand for customer groups that are not continuously metered. For each distinct combination of profile_id, period, and day there are 96 quarter-hourly measurements of electrical power, normalised to an annual consumption of 1,000 kWh. This function supports data from 1990 to 2073.

See vignette("standardlastprofile") for more details about the algorithm.

Profile IDs

There are 16 profile IDs across two generations:

1999 profiles:

• H0: Households

• G0, G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6: Commercial

• L0, L1, L2: Agriculture

2025 profiles

In 2025, BDEW published an updated set of standard load profiles reflecting changes in electricity consumption patterns since the original 1999 study. Five new profiles are included:

• H25: households — updated version of H0

• G25: commerce (general) — updated version of G0

• L25: agriculture — updated version of L0

• P25: combination profile for households with a photovoltaic (PV) system

• S25: combination profile for households with a PV system and battery storage

For descriptions of each profile, call slp_info().

Periods and day types

1999 profiles use three seasonal periods:

• summer: May 15 to September 14

• winter: November 1 to March 20

• transition: March 21 to May 14, and September 15 to October 31

2025 profiles use calendar months (january … december) instead of seasons.

Within each period, days are classified as:

• workday: Monday to Friday

• saturday: Saturdays; Dec 24th and Dec 31st are also treated as Saturdays unless they fall on a Sunday

• sunday: Sundays and all public holidays

Public holidays

By default, the following nine public holidays observed nationwide across all German states are treated as Sundays:

• New Year's Day (1 January)

• Good Friday

• Easter Monday

• Labour Day (1 May)

• Ascension Day

• Whit Monday

• German Unity Day (3 October)

• Christmas Day (25 December)

• Boxing Day (26 December)

State-level holidays are not included by default. These vary by state and can change — for example, Berlin observed a one-time holiday on 8 May 2025 (end of World War II anniversary). Use the holidays argument to supply your own dates instead; the built-in data are then ignored entirely.

Units and conversion

The 1999 source file stores values in watts (W), normalised to 1,000 kWh/a. The 2025 source file stores values in kWh per 15-minute interval, normalised to 1,000,000 kWh/a. To keep all profiles consistent, the 2025 values are converted to watts normalised to 1,000 kWh/a.

To convert to energy consumed per interval in kWh:

kwh <- out$watts / 4 / 1000

Value

A data.frame with four variables:

• profile_id, character, load profile identifier

• start_time, POSIXct / POSIXlt, start time

• end_time, POSIXct / POSIXlt, end time

• watts, numeric, average electric power in watts per 15-minute interval, normalised to an annual consumption of 1,000 kWh

Source

https://www.bdew.de/energie/standardlastprofile-strom/

https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/1999_Repraesentative-VDEW-Lastprofile.pdf

https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/2000131_Anwendung-repraesentativen_Lastprofile-Step-by-step.pdf

Examples

start <- "2026-01-01"
end <- "2026-12-31"

# multiple profile IDs are supported
L <- slp_generate(c("L0", "L1", "L2"), start, end)
head(L)

# supply custom holiday dates (e.g. only treat New Year's Day as a holiday)
H0_custom <- slp_generate("H0", start, end, holidays = "2026-01-01")

# Fetch state-level holidays from the nager.Date API and pass them in.
# Each entry in the API response contains two relevant fields:
#   $global  — logical; TRUE = nationwide holiday, FALSE = state-specific
#   $counties — list of ISO 3166-2 state codes (e.g. "DE-BE" for Berlin)
#               when global is FALSE; NULL otherwise
#
# Berlin (DE-BE) observes International Women's Day (March 8) in addition
# to all nationwide holidays. The example below fetches 2027 holidays,
# keeps entries where global is TRUE or "DE-BE" appears in counties, and
# passes the resulting dates to slp_generate().
## Not run: 
resp <- httr2::request("https://date.nager.at/api/v3") |>
  httr2::req_url_path_append("PublicHolidays", "2027", "DE") |>
  httr2::req_perform() |>
  httr2::resp_body_json()

is_berlin <- \(x) isTRUE(x$global) || "DE-BE" %in% unlist(x$counties)
holidays_berlin_2027 <- as.Date(
  vapply(Filter(is_berlin, resp), \(x) x$date, character(1))
)

H0_berlin_2027 <- slp_generate(
  "H0", "2027-01-01", "2027-12-31",
  holidays = holidays_berlin_2027
)

## End(Not run)

# consider only nationwide public holidays (default)
H0_2026 <- slp_generate("H0", start, end)

# when the deprecated state_code and holidays are both supplied, both sets
# of dates are treated as Sundays: user-provided dates from holidays and
# state-specific built-in holidays from state_code are merged
suppressWarnings(
  slp_generate("G0", "2026-04-01", "2026-04-01",
    state_code = "SL", holidays = "2026-04-01") |>
    head()
)

# electric power values are normalised to consumption of ~1,000 kWh/a
sum(H0_2026$watts / 4 / 1000)

# convert watts to kWh per interval using a wrapper
slp_generate_kwh <- \(...) {
  out <- slp_generate(...)
  out$kwh <- out$watts / 4 / 1000
  out
}
H0_kwh <- slp_generate_kwh("H0", start, end)
head(H0_kwh)

Retrieve information on standard load profiles

Description

Information and examples on standard load profiles from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft e.V.)

Usage

slp_info(profile_id, language = c("EN", "DE"))

Arguments

Value

A named list with one element per profile_id. Each element is itself a list with three character components: profile (the identifier), description (a short label), and details (a longer explanation).

Source

https://www.bdew.de/energie/standardlastprofile-strom/

https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/2000131_Anwendung-repraesentativen_Lastprofile-Step-by-step.pdf

https://www.bdew.de/media/documents/Zuordnung_der_VDEW-Lastprofile_zum_Kundengruppenschluessel.pdf

Examples

slp_info("G5", language = "DE")

# multiple profile IDs are supported
slp_info(c("G0", "G5"))