The Impact of COVID-19 on Electricity Demand and Generation in Japan

Abstract

This research considered changes in monthly electricity generation and demand in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Observed network electricity demand and generation type for the January–June 2020 period were compared to forecast values (using a triple exponential smoothing method) based on trends established from 2016 to 2019. Regional level electricity demand data showed little variation from expected trends for domestic energy users, but lower than expected business and industrial network demand, particularly in the 50–2000 kW cohort. Electricity demand was most likely to deviate from existing trends in May 2020, which is in-line with the voluntary lockdown activities. These results are consistent with observed patterns from other international studies into the impact of COVID-19 on electricity demand. Generation was found to be reduced in May and June of 2020, without significant impacts to the generation makeup, largely due to Japan’s positioning within a broader energy transition context. These findings validate previous studies and add to the broader discussions on drivers and the rationale for electricity demand behaviors between user scales. Previous studies examined the electricity demand reductions of full and partial lockdowns. This analysis adds to this discourse by documenting the impacts of a voluntary lockdown.

Effects of the Human-Mobility Change during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Electricity Demand

“…Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world economy, many studies have revealed that energy-consumption patterns in various countries have been disrupted by the countermeasures, such as the lockdown, designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (Bahmanyar et al 2020;Aruga et al 2020;D'Alessandro et al 2021;Rouleau and Gosselin 2021). In many countries that implemented lockdown measures, it is suggested that although domestic electricity demand increased when people spent more time in their homes, the overall electricity consumption decreased as business and physical activities shrank severely; the reduction in commercial and industrial demand was greater than the increase in the domestic demand (Bahmanyar et al 2020).…”