Energy Demand in the State of Kuwait During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Technical, Economic, and Environmental Perspectives

Abstract

The present paper reports the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the electricity peak load and power generation in the State of Kuwait during the partial and full curfews imposed in March, April and May 2020 using historic data measured data and the predictions provided by a statistical genetic algorithm model. A quantitative assessment is made of the economic and environmental impacts caused by partial and full lockdowns. Comparison of measured peak demand for 2019 and 2020 with predicted peak demand for 2020 has: (i) enabled an accurate evaluation of residential energy consumption in the state of Kuwait at nearly 18 MWh yearly the highest energy consumption per capita in the world, (ii) shown that the imposition of the curfews to reduce the spread of COVID-19 caused a fall in the demand for electrical power of 17.6% compared with the expected demand and (iii) quantified the reduction in CO2, NOx and CO pollutant emissions produced by power plants due to less fuel being consumed. A mathematical model has been developed to predict the peak electric load in the national grid according to climatic data supplied by the Meteorological Department of Civil Aviation of Kuwait and National Control Center (NCC).

A retrospective analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on energy consumption at a disaggregated level

“…Therefore, the methodology for this mid-term impact study is the direct comparison of historical data of the year 2020 with the average consumption of the two previous years. This is the most common way to evaluate the impact, many authors who have studied the variation of energy consumption due to the COVID have assessed the impact evaluation using the energy consumption in previous years [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] , [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] , [19] , [20] , [23] .…”

“…In [16] , the authors affirm that the state of Ontario (Canada) has had a reduction of 14% in the energy consumption during lockdowns. A study of the energy consumption profile during lockdowns in the state of Kuwait is presented in [17] , where their authors estimate that the energy consumption has been reduced in a 17.6% during the full lockdowns. In [18] , the impact in the electric energy consumption in different regions of Brazil has been estimated, obtaining reductions between 20% and 7% depending on the region.…”

“…This approach based on disaggregated information has the advantage of allowing one to discover behavior that is normally hidden when using aggregated data. Moreover, with the proposed approach, the impact on the consumption profile of different economic activities, which is difficult to quantify at aggregated levels [17] , can also be obtained and analyzed. To the best of our knowledge, no analysis of this kind has been done using data at customer level using Smart Meters.…”

COVID-19 and household energy implications: what are the main impacts on energy use?

“…The timeline for the survey is selected based on three different stages in a relatively short period (see section 2.1) to have a review of impacts of the COVID-19 on energy consumption [32,38], potential financial implications [40], and energy bills [20,54]. These could then be evaluated further for potential policy interventions [55] that could lead to better socio-economic pathways [56] after the recovery stage of the pandemic. Given the increase in household consumption is inevitable [38] the study is mainly designed to verify the implications that should be addressed in a short-to-midterm.…”

The impact of COVID ‐19 on the electricity demand: a case study for Turkey

“…They also made a quantitative evaluation of the economic and environmental impacts of partial and full lockdowns. 28 29 The previous studies emphasize the importance and necessity of energy forecasting to help electricity companies manage their resources effectively and ensure a safe electricity supply to the end-user during the pandemic. Although previous studies have examined various effects of epidemic-like emergencies, research on the impact of the epidemic on the electricity sector is still needed due to the different severity of the epidemic in different countries.…”