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

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.