The COVID-19 pandemic's effect on electricity consumption in Sweden

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic affected societies and people's lives in many ways. In order for governments to be prepared for how a future pandemic can affect behaviours related to electricity consumptions, and which role their own policy through recommendations and restrictions plays in this, it is important to learn our lessons from this pandemic. This thesis looks at how electricity consumption in four different sectors in a suburban area in Sweden was affected by the pandemic, and by government recommendations and restrictions, using predictions from a Vector Autogression model along with impulse response analysis. The findings show the predictions far into the future using VAR models with many paramenters come with great uncertainty, making it difficult to draw conclusions. Impulse response analysis show that the residential sector responded quickly to stricter government recommendations and restrictions, by increasing their electricity consumption. The opposite was found for the industrial, commercial, and public sector, where the response typically took a week, and caused electrcitiy consumptino in these sectors to decline. Future research should look at ways to attain smaller predictions intervals even for long-term forecasts.