November 2020: Trends in Estimated Load Impacts of COVID-19 Mitigation Policies on European and North American Electricity Consumption

March through November 2020

As previously discussed in the first of this blog series on April 13, 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 with an estimated reduction in average daily load between -12.3% and -7.2%. In both Europe and North America, November marked a slight uptick in the load impact, reflecting renewed lockdown activity driven by a new wave of COVID-19 cases.

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.

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