Abstract: Saturated power consumption is a pivotal index in determining the final network scale in power system planning, which can provide significant information for system planning and give guidance for gird construction and rational distribution of power transmission lines. From the inspiration of Solow model which is successfully applied to economic problems, power consumption forecasting was done with extended Solow long-term equilibrium model through broadening and revising the Solow model, in which industrial structure and power consumption structure were used to represent the structural effects; meanwhile, several scale effects and the progress of technology was combined into extend Solow mode. The new model has high forecasting accuracy, which is able to solve future saturated power consumption problems with the consideration of social and economic data, power grid status and future policies. From the example of Eastern China, saturated power consumption was explored which proves a meaningful reference on saturated load forecasting of regional grids.

Key words: regional power grid, saturated power consumption, extended Solow model, structural effects, scale effects, long-term equilibrium model