Abstract
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to assess energy use during times of emergency that disrupt daily and seasonal patterns. The authors present findings from a regional evaluation in the city of Los Angeles (California, USA) with broad application to other areas and demonstrate an approach for isolating and analyzing residential loads from community-level electric utility feeder data. The study addresses effects on residential energy use and the implications for future energy use models, energy planning, and device energy standards and utility program development. In this study we review changes in residential energy use during the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic from four residential communities across Los Angeles covering approximately 6603 households within two microclimate sub regional areas (Los Angeles Basin and San Fernando Valley). Analyses address both absolute and seasonal temperature-corrected energy use changes while assessing estimated changes on energy usage from both temperature-sensitive loads (e.g., air conditioning and electric heating) and non-temperature-sensitive loads (e.g., consumer electronics and major appliance use). An average 5.1% increase in total residential energy use was observed for non-temperature sensitive loads during the pandemic period compared to a 2018–2019 baseline. During mid-spring when shelter in place activity was highest a peak monthly energy use of 20.9% increase was seen compared to a 2018–2019 composite baseline. Considering an average of the top five warmest summer days, a 9.5% increase in energy use was observed for events during summer 2020 compared to summer 2018 (a year with similar magnitude summer high heat events). Based on these results, a potential trend is identified for increased residential load during pandemics and other shelter-in-place disruptions, net of any temperature-sensitive load shifts with greater impacts expected for lower-income communities.
Highlights
Los Angeles (LA) County state of emergency was declared on 3 March while a California-wide state of emergency was declared on 4 March in response to rising regional case numbers
This research adds to the growing body of knowledge on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected human behavior and the resulting impact on energy usage
Over the course of the 2020 pandemic period, fatigue with SIP compliance led to a rebound toward earlier pre-pandemic occupancy rates and a substantial rise in regional COVID-19 active cases
Summary
Mandatory stay-at-home periods globally reduced jet and aviation fuel by 50%, gasoline by 30%, and electricity (on average) about 10 percent during the early pandemic where shelter-in-place (SIP) orders were widespread across many regions. This reduction was followed by partial rebounds for all mentioned energy types later in 2020 [2,7,8,9,10,11]. Preliminary results from studies early in the pandemic suggest increased residential energy use, but results vary [12,13,14]
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