Demand Side Management : how has residential electricity demand changed during the corona pandemic?
Abstract: Restrictive social distancing measures imposed by governments across the world to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have led to immediate changes in general behaviour and habits, which has had major effects on electricity systems. The pandemic has highlighted the great importance of reliable electricity supply in society as many people were forced to start working from home and thus became entirely reliant on digital modes of communication and information sharing. However, the resilience of energy systems could become weakened in the future as the share of intermittent renewable energy sources keeps increasing. If working from home were to become the norm in the future, knowing how households’ electricity load curves are affected by such a change could be valuable and help increase capabilities of demand side flexibility in the household sector. In this project, appliance-level electricity demand data gathered from Swedish households is used to create a simple bottom-up model. The purpose of the model is to be able to evaluate how the total electricity demand in a residential area changes after implementing behavioral changes at a household level. Specifically, the model was used to evaluate the effect of certain households in a region switching to working from home. Results were obtained from the model in the form of estimated changes in the electricity demand for different proportions of teleworking households. These changes were then combined with electricity demand data from a residential area in Stockholm to create new load curves that show what electricity demand could look like for the residential area at different shares of households working from home. The final results are presented in the form of estimated changes in electricity demand, peak power and electricity consumption for 30, 60 and 90 percent of households working from home.The results showed that weekdays' average load profile may have changed considerably in 2020 for residential areas similar to the one studied in Stockholm. For all scenarios, the change in electricity demand was most noticeable in the middle of the day, when the peak power increased significantly. During the evening, however, neither the electricity demand nor the power peak changed significantly. The peak power during normal working hours increased by 11,6% to 17,1% depending on the season, while total electricity consumption on an average weekday increased by 4,9% to 7,4% compared to pre-pandemic values. Still, the overall weekday power peak typically occurring around dinner time remained nearly unchanged. However, examining the results for different shares of households working from home shows that if almost all were to work from home, the overall peak power could shift from occurring in the evening to the middle of the day. If a new measurement campaign of Swedish households were to be conducted in the future, the ability to predict and prepare for the electricity demand of tomorrow’s homes would improve greatly.
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