Create your load assessment

Create your load assessment

In Odyssey, load profiles/assessments are created using “Customer Types”, or segments of customers you intend to serve. Each customer type has a daily load profile generated by modeling either the equipment they use or their total daily load.

Build your baseline load on the Load module. Your Baseline Load is what you are designing your generation system for which you intend to serve after 1-2 yrs of operation once baseline customers have signed up for electricity. Using the "Financials" page, you can ramp up your customer electricity usage up to the baseline year and add additional growth after the baseline year, learn more. 

Choose your customer type design method

  1. Navigate to the Load module of your project
  2. Select the Add Customer Type button
  3. Select the tile for your preferred customer type design method

  1. Create Customer Type (Most common method)

    1. Create a new customer type from scratch.
    2. Add either: Equipment or a daily load to the customer. See instructions on adding a customer type below.

  2. Choose From Library

  1. Use libraries to save time!
  2. If you saved a customer type, add a customer type (with equipment) from your library. See how to save customer types to libraries below.
  3. Re-use those assumptions for future projects.
  4. See also: Odyssey's public library with common customer assumptions.
  5. Save time by starting with a pre-set customer type and making any adjustments. 

  1. Upload 8760

  1. If you have an 8760 hourly load profile for the year, you can upload an Excel load profile for multiple customer types at once. If you use the 8760 Upload, this is the only step required to build out your load.

Read the 8760 Upload Guide here

1. Click the Upload 8760 tile
2. Select the Download 8760 Template button
3. Select Upload 8760 File button to upload your completed template

Create a customer type 

Follow the instructions below if you chose the Create A Customer Type upload method. 
1. Select the Create Customer Type tile
2. Complete each field in the modal

    1. Customer Category

Choose from 6 customer category choices in the dropdown menu: 
  1. Internal load accounts for the load that is not metered (e.g. load from meters, cooling the battery bank, etc.).
  2. Productive and Anchor loads are usually three-phase connections, and the others are typically single phase. 

    1. Customer Type Name

Customer Type Name is a sub-categorization of the Customer Category
  1. This sub-category should group your customers according to how you expect customers to use power.
  2. A few examples would be High Usage Household, Tailor, Posho Mill, etc. For example, you might specify “Small Household” to group low-consuming residential users together.
  3. If you do not need to create segments of your customers beyond the Customer Category level, you may repeat the customer category for Customer Type Name.

    1. Number of Customers 

This is the number of customers you expect to serve for that customer type.
3. Click Save
4. Repeat to add additional customer types


Add load to a customer type

Once you create a customer type, you need to add your load demand assessment for the customer type.
  1. Select the arrow next to the Customer Type name to expand a customer type accordion.
  2. Select the Add Load button.
  3. Odyssey accommodates two different load methods. Choose the method that matches your demand assessment:

Inventory method 

Use the inventory method to build a granular load forecast from assumptions about how customers will use appliances and equipment

Total daily load method

The total daily load method forecasts load based on expected daily usage (Wh per day). 

Complete the Add Load modal

  1. Enter load assumptions for the Equipment/Total Load to your customer type in the Add Load modal.
  2. To enter assumptions for either the inventory or total daily load methods, enter the following data:


  1. Equipment Name / Total Load

Enter the name of the equipment for which you are creating a usage profile. If you are using the daily load method, enter “Total Load” here.

  1. Quantity per Customer

  1. Enter the number of appliances/pieces of equipment that an average customer within the customer type uses.
  2. For example, if 80% of customers in the customer segment have a TV, enter 0.8, if all customers have 2 lights, enter 2.
  3. Enter 1 if you are using the Total Load method.

Power per equipment (W) or Total Daily Load (Wh)

Enter the wattage (in W) of the appliance or piece of equipment. Or, enter the total daily load (Wh per day) if using the daily load method.

  1. Usage Profile

The utilization profile, or usage curve, is the percentage of time in an hour that an appliance is on full power or the % of the full power the appliance is operating at during the hour. This can also be the percentage of customers using the equipment during a certain time, or the likelihood that a piece of equipment is being used in that hour. For the daily load method, this field represents the % of total daily load that occurs in that hour. 
  1. Enter values between 0 and 100 for each hour.
  2. For the inventory method, entering 90 (%) means the equipment is operating (on average) at 90% of peak power for the entire hour. 
If you're using the total daily load method, all percentages should sum to 100. When all percentages add to 100%, the daily load modeled for the customer will match the value you entered in the Total Daily Load (Wh) field. 
You can copy and paste into this table from Excel for easier entry.

  1. Custom Months & Weekends

You have the option to specify custom months to account for seasonal equipment profiles. Custom weekends allow you to account for equipment that is used differently during the week – for example, a school might not be open on the weekends, so the equipment would not be used.

Once you have defined a Customer Type, you can save it to the library to use for a new project by clicking the  (“Choose from Library”). Odyssey is also working with academic institutions to develop pre-set customer profiles for certain regions.


Select Recalculate Load

  1. Select Recalculate Load on the top of the page to calculate the load graph and your load summary.
    1. This will also calculate the 8760 time series for your site which you can download as a CSV by selecting Download Time Series.
  2. View the load summary at the top of the page

Adjust your Load Profile

  1. Adjust the Show & Scale Load sliders to the right of the graph to scale your load profile for each customer category up or down. 
  2. Choose the range of your scale by entering a value in Set Maximum. 
  3. Use the slider or enter a percentage next to a customer category to scale the load for a customer category.
    1. Scaling the slider to 80% will adjust your load down to 80% of what you inputted. 
    2. The Scaling Factor is applied to the customer types below the graph and adjusts the daily load up or down.
  4. Once you have finalized the load adjustments you want to apply, select Accept Load to use the adjusted load moving forward.
    1. This may take a minute to update the load profile.
You can click on a Customer Category to toggle customer segments on and off in the load graph.