Abstract
Increasing concerns about sustainability and energy conservation, coupled with the proliferation of incentives in the EU to achieve energy savings, suggest that significant improvements in energy efficiency should be realized. A policy measure that should have a direct impact on energy savings is the replacement of incandescent and halogen light bulbs by more efficient lighting technologies, which was implemented in 2009. Due to the lack of detailed data, it is not feasible to measure the effect of energy-efficient improvements on electricity consumption at the aggregate level using a bottom-up approach. To overcome this limitation, this paper analyzes hourly electricity demand in a very specific period of the day: the transition from day to night. In this short period, it is plausible that lighting is the main driver of changes in electricity demand, thus making it possible to estimate the increase in electricity consumption when lights are switched on and to analyze the effects of higher energy efficiency in lighting, if any. The results of the analysis for Spain show that during the periods 2009–2011 and 2015–2016, an estimated energy savings of 251 GWh can be attributed to a reduction in the magnitude of the lighting effect, which accounts for 20.3% of the observed decrease in electricity consumption during these two periods.
Highlights
Increasing concerns about sustainability and energy conservation, coupled with the proliferation of incentives in the EU to achieve energy savings, suggest that significant improvements in energy efficiency should be realized
The results of the analysis for Spain show that during the periods 2009–2011 and 2015–2016, an estimated energy savings of 251 GWh can be attributed to a reduction in the magnitude of the lighting effect, which accounts for 20.3% of the observed decrease in electricity consumption during these two periods
Instead of following a bottom-up approach based on the observed past behavior of agents, such as the method proposed by Zhang et al 2021 to evaluate the impact of population ageing on future energy consumption or by Babrowski et al 2014 to model the potential of electric vehicles to shift the load curve, we propose to directly measure the observed change in the shape of the hourly electricity demand
Summary
Compact fluorescent Incandescent Linear fluorescent Halogen White LED Induction lamp (1). As pointed out in Moral-Carcedo and Pérez-García (2017), when there is a day/night transition (sunset) throughout the year, an abnormal but smooth increase in electricity consumption can be observed, which could be attributed to the switch-on effect of lights. The city of Madrid is located near the geographic center of peninsular Spain, and the difference in sunset times between these three cities and Madrid is less than 30 min (see Table 2) This lighting effect is asymmetric, and no decrease in electricity consumption is observed after sunrise. The hourly demand by month is shown in two
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