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On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 epidemic to be a global pandemic. This was a consequence of the rapid increase in the number of people with positive test results, the increase in deaths due to COVID-19, and the lack of pharmaceutical drugs. Governments introduced national lockdowns, which have impacted both energy consumption and economies. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: do COVID-19 lockdowns affect the business cycle? We used the cycle clock approach to assess the magnitude of decrease in electricity consumption in the three waves of the epidemic, namely, April 2020, November 2021, and April 2021. Additionally, we checked the relation between energy consumption and GDP by means of spectral analysis. Results for selected 28 European countries confirm an impact of the introduced non-pharmaceutical interventions on both energy consumption and business cycle. The reduction of restrictions in subsequent pandemic waves increased electricity consumption, which suggests movement out of the economic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly reoriented the lives of billions of people across the globe toward working, learning, and subsisting from home. This paper examines the consequences of this disruption of electricity use in Australian households. Using high-frequency electricity monitoring from 491 houses and per-circuit monitoring and in-depth interviews with 17 households, the paper (1) compares changes in energy use before and during COVID-19 lockdown, (2) quantifies the key drivers of changes in energy use experienced by households during lockdown, and (3) tracks households' interactions with energy use feedback. The findings identify significant increases in certain aspects of household electricity use directly related to COVID-19, including increased cooking and digital device use. Yet despite the government mandate requiring a large proportion of the population to remain at home, overall energy use among the majority of Queensland households monitored actually decreased during lockdown versus prior, driven primarily by a reduction in air conditioner use during lockdown as the weather cooled. Further, despite significant quantified and self-reported changes in energy use, users who had energy use feedback installed accessed their dashboards less during lockdown than they did prior. The paper discusses these results in the context of statistics on COVID-19 related energy demand fluctuations elsewhere, and the implications for the provision of energy use information to residents during significant disruptions such as lockdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused changes in electricity demand and, consequently, electricity consumption profiles. Given the rapid changes in energy prices, it is significant from the perspective of energy companies, and forecasting consumed energy volume. A necessity for accurate energy volume planning forces the need for analyzing consumers' behaviors during the pandemic, especially under lockdowns, to prepare for the possibility of another pandemic wave. Many business clients analyzed in the paper are economic entities functioning in sectors under restrictions. That is why analyzing the pandemic's impact on the change in energy consumption profiles and volume of these entities is particularly meaningful. The article analyzes the pandemic and restrictions' impact on the total change of energy consumption volume and demand profiles. The analysis was conducted basing on data collected from a Polish energy trading and sales company. It focused on the energy consumption of its corporate clients. Analyzed data included aggregated energy consumption volumes for all company's customers and key groups of economic entities under restrictions. The analysis demonstrates the influence of pandemic restrictions on energy consumption in the group of business clients. Significant differences are observable among various sectors of the economy. The research proves that the largest drops in energy consumption are related to shopping centers and offices. Altogether, the restrictions have caused a 15–23% energy consumption drop during the first lockdown and a maximum 11% during the second against expected values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building sector consumes as much as 80% of generated electricity in the UAE; during the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy consumption of two sub-sectors, i.e., commercial (50%) and residential (30%), was significantly impacted. The residential sector was impacted the most due to an increase in the average occupancy during the lockdown period. This increment continued even after the lockdown due to the fear of infection. The COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdown measures can be considered experimental setups, allowing for a better understanding of how users shift their consumption under new conditions. The emergency health measures and new social dynamics shaped the residential sector's energy behavior and its increase in electricity consumption. This article presents and analyzes the identified issues concerning residential electricity consumers and how their behaviors change based on the electricity consumption data during the COVID-19 period. The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority conducted a voluntary survey to define the profiles of its residential customers. A sample of 439 consumers participated in this survey and four years of smart meter records. The analysis focused on understanding behavioral changes in consumers during the COVID-19 period. At this time, the dwellings were occupied for longer than usual, increasing their domestic energy consumption and altering the daily peak hours for the comparable period before, during, and after the lockdown. This work addressed COVID-19 and the lockdown as an atypical case. The authors used a machine learning model and the consumption data for 2018 to predict the consumption for each year afterward, observing the COVID-19 years (2020 and 2021), and compared them with the so-called typical 2019 predictions. Four years of fifteen-minute resolution data and the detailed profiles of the customers led to a better understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on residential energy use, irrespective of changes caused by seasonal variations. The findings include the reasons for the changes in consumption and the effects of the pandemic. There was a 12% increase in the annual consumption for the sample residents considered in 2020 (the COVID-19-affected year) as compared to 2019, and the total consumption remained similar with only a 0.2% decrease in 2021. The article also reports that machine learning models created in only one year, 2018, performed better by 10% in prediction compared with the deep learning models due to the limited training data available. The article implies the need for exploring approaches/features that could model the previously unseen COVID-19-like scenarios to improve the performance in case of such an event in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]