Correctly defining and grouping electrical feeders is of great importance for electrical system operators. In this paper, we compare two different clustering techniques, K-means and hierarchical agglomerative clustering, applied to real data from the east region of Paraguay. The raw data were pre-processed, resulting in four data sets, namely, (i) a weekly feeder demand, (ii) a monthly feeder demand, (iii) a statistical feature set extracted from the original data and (iv) a seasonal and daily consumption feature set obtained considering the characteristics of the Paraguayan load curve. Considering the four data sets, two clustering algorithms, two distance metrics and five linkage criteria a total of 36 models with the Silhouette, Davies–Bouldin and Calinski–Harabasz index scores was assessed. The K-means algorithms with the seasonal feature data sets showed the best performance considering the Silhouette, Calinski–Harabasz and Davies–Bouldin validation index scores with a configuration of six clusters.

Forecasting the dynamics of the number of cases with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in a given population is a challenging task due to behavioural changes which occur over short periods. Planning of hospital resources and containment measures in the near term require a scenario analysis and the use of predictive models to gain insight into possible outcomes for each scenario. In this paper, we present the SEIR-H epidemiological model for the spread dynamics in a given population and the impact of COVID-19 in the local health system. It was developed as an extension of the classic SEIR model to account for required hospital resources and behavioural changes of the population in response to containment measures. Time-varying parameters such as transmissibility are estimated using Bayesian methods, based on the database of reported cases with a moving time-window strategy. The assessment of the model offers reasonable results with estimated parameters and simulations, reflecting the observed dynamics in Paraguay. The proposed model can be used to simulate future scenarios and possible effects of containment strategies, to guide the public institution response based on the available resources in the local health system.