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January 2021: Trends in Estimated Load Impacts of COVID-19 Mitigation Policies on European and North American Electricity Consumption

February 23, 2021

March 2020 through January 2021

As previously discussed in the first of this blog series on April 13, 2020, as lockdown policies are enacted to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, the Itron Forecasting team is leveraging publicly available hourly load data for most North American Independent System Operators (ISOs) and a select set of European countries to build a picture of the load impacts by region. To assess the load impact of COVID-19 mitigation strategies, actual loads when many of these policies began are compared to baseline loads without COVID-19 policy impacts.

Across Europe and North America, the biggest estimated load reductions occurred in April 2020 with an estimated reduction in average daily load between -12.3% and -7.2%. This instance of the memos extends prior analyses that presents estimates of the load impacts by region, month, and the time of use period by adding pre- and post-hourly load shapes by season. A comparison of the hourly shapes provides a deeper understanding of how power consumption is evolving given current economic conditions and COVID-19 restrictions.

For a detailed summary of the estimated load impacts, go to the forecasting website to download the latest COVID-19 Load Impact memo.

The Itron Forecasting team will continue to post updated summary blogs and corresponding memos on these trends. Subscribe to our blog to be notified of new posts and contact us at forecasting@itron.com if you have further questions.

By Dr. Frank A. Monforte

Director of Forecasting Solutions

Dr. Frank A. Monforte is Director of Forecasting Solutions at Itron, where he is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of real-time load and generation forecasting, retail portfolio forecasting, and long-term energy forecasting. Dr. Monforte’s real-time forecasting expertise includes authoring the load forecasting models used to support real-time system operations for the North American system operators, the California ISO, the New York ISO, the Midwest ISO, ERCOT, the IESO, and the Australian system operators AEMO and Western Power. Recent efforts include authoring embedded solar, solar plant, and wind farm generation forecast models used to support real-time operations at the California ISO. Dr. Monforte founded the annual ISO/TSO Forecasting Summit that brings together ISO/TSO forecasters from around the world to discuss forecasting challenges unique to their organizations. He directs the implementation of Itron’s Retail Forecasting System, including efforts for energy retailers operating in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, Australia, and the U.S. These systems produce energy forecasts for retail portfolios of interval metered and non-interval metered customers. The forecast models he has developed support forecasting of power, gas and heat demand and forecasting of wind, solar, landfill gas, and mine gas generation. Dr. Monforte presides over the annual Itron European Energy Forecasting Group meeting that brings together European Energy Forecasters for an open exchange of ideas and solutions. Dr. Monforte directed the development of Itron’s Statistically Adjusted End-Use Forecasting model and supporting data. He founded the Energy Forecasting Group, which directs primary research in the area of long-run end-use forecasting. Recent efforts include designing economic indices that provide long-run forecast stability during periods of economic uncertainty. Email Frank at frank.monforte@itron.com, or click here to connect on LinkedIn.