Agdas Duzgun, Barooah Prabir
School of Civil and Environmental EngineeringQueensland University of Technology Brisbane QLD 4000 Australia.
Department of Mechanical EngineeringUniversity of Florida Gainesville FL 32611 USA.
IEEE Access. 2020 Aug 17;8:151523-151534. doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3016912. eCollection 2020.
After the onset of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, a number of studies reported on possible changes in electricity consumption trends. The overall theme of these reports was that "electricity use has decreased during the pandemic, but the power grid is still reliable"-mostly due to reduced economic activity. In this paper, we analyze electricity data until the end of May 2020, examining both electricity demand and variables that can indicate stress on the power grid. We limit this study to three states in the U.S. California, Florida and New York. The results indicate that the effect of the pandemic on electricity demand is not a simple reduction, and there are noticeable differences among regions analyzed. The variables that can indicate stress on the grid (e.g., daily peak and trough of the hourly demand, demand ramp rate, demand forecast error, and net electricity interchange) also conveyed mixed messages: some indicate an increase in stress, some indicate a decrease, and some do not indicate any clear difference. A positive message is that some of the changes that were observed around the time stay-at-home orders were issued appeared to revert back by May 2020. A key challenge in ascribing any observed change to the pandemic is correcting for weather as it can be challenging to accurately define it for large geographic regions. We provide a weather-correction method, apply it to a small city-wide area in North Central Florida, and discuss the implications of the estimated changes in demand. The results indicate that a 10% (95% CI [2%, 18%]) increase in electricity demand is likely to have occurred due to COVID-19 for the city analyzed.
在近期新冠疫情爆发后，多项研究报告了电力消耗趋势可能发生的变化。这些报告的总体主题是“疫情期间用电量下降，但电网仍保持可靠”——这主要是由于经济活动减少。在本文中，我们分析了截至2020年5月底的电力数据，研究了电力需求以及能够表明电网压力的变量。我们将这项研究局限于美国的三个州——加利福尼亚州、佛罗里达州和纽约州。结果表明，疫情对电力需求的影响并非简单的下降，而且在所分析的地区之间存在显著差异。能够表明电网压力的变量（例如每小时需求的日峰值和谷值、需求爬坡率、需求预测误差以及净电力交换）也传达了复杂的信息：一些表明压力增加，一些表明压力下降，还有一些没有显示出任何明显差异。一个积极的信息是，在发布居家令前后观察到的一些变化到2020年5月似乎有所恢复。将任何观察到的变化归因于疫情的一个关键挑战是校正天气，因为对于广大地理区域来说，准确界定天气情况可能具有挑战性。我们提供了一种天气校正方法，将其应用于佛罗里达州中北部一个小城市范围的区域，并讨论了估计的需求变化的影响。结果表明，对于所分析的城市，由于新冠疫情，电力需求可能增加了10%（95%置信区间[2%，18%]）。
