In electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

, a load profile is a graph of the variation in the electrical load versus time. A load profile will vary according to customer type (typical examples include residential, commercial and industrial), temperature and holiday seasons.
In the electricity generation

Electricity generation

Electricity generation is the process of generating electric energy from other forms of energy.The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday...

 sector, a load curve

Load curve

]A load curve is a chart showing the amount of electrical energy customers use over the course of time. Power producers use this information to plan how much electricity they will need to make available at any given time...

 is a chart showing the amount of electricity customers use over a period of time. Generation companies use this information to plan how much power they will need to generate at any given time.