Electricity demand during pandemic times: The case of the COVID-19 in Spain

I. Santiago, A. Moreno-Munoz, P. Quintero-Jiménez, F. Garcia-Torres and M.J. Gonzalez-Redondo

Energy Policy, 2021, vol. 148, issue PA

Abstract: Electricity demand and its typical load pattern are usually affected by many endogenous and exogenous factors to which the generation system must accordingly respond through utility operators. Lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 imposed by many countries have led to sudden changes in socioeconomic habits which have had direct effects on the electricity systems. Therefore, a detailed analysis of how confinement measures have modified the electricity consumption in Spain, one of the countries most affected by this pandemic, has been performed in this work. Its electricity consumption has decreased by 13.49% from March 14 to April 30, compared to the average value of five previous years. Daily power demand profiles, especially morning and evening peaks, have been modified at homes, hospitals, and in the total power demand. These changes generate a greater uncertainty for the System Operator when making demand forecasts, but production deviations have increased by only 0.1%, thanks to the presence of a diversified generation mix, which has been modified during this period, increasing the proportion of renewable sources and decreasing CO2 emissions.

Keywords: Power demand drop; COVID-19 pandemic; Lockdown; Electricity consumption; Impact on power grids; Power generation mix (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (61)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421520306753
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:148:y:2021:i:pa:s0301421520306753

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111964

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().