Sweltering Nights

August 13, 2020

The hard lockdown and slow reopening of the economy during the COVID 19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity to understand the trend in electricity consumption in our cities. While diverse use of electricity – residential, commercial, retail, industry, agriculture among others, adds up to contribute to the overall electricity demand in normal times, the lockdown phases have uniquely isolated the influence of residential demand. With economic activities coming to a near halt, only the households remained active users. But this is not a simple and an obvious story of substantial drop in power consumption during hard lockdown. There is in fact, a more complex message around the pattern of residential demand.

Despite the lower economic activities compared to previous summers, residential demand remained obstinate and bullish due to higher heat stress and resultant thermal discomfort during this summer lockdown. Not many have noticed this story though; public attention was drawn more towards the visible blue sky during the pandemic