Quantitative Assessment of U.S. Bulk Power Systems and Market Operations during COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper provides a data-driven analysis of COVID-19's impact on U.S. bulk power systems and markets, highlighting demand, price drops, regional variances, and operational challenges during the pandemic.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, data-driven framework to quantify COVID-19's effects on power system security, generation, demand, and prices across U.S. regions.

Findings

Electric power demand and prices declined during COVID-19.

Regional impacts varied, with the Northeast most affected.

The study offers open-source data and analysis tools.

Abstract

Starting in early 2020, the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) severely affected the U.S., causing substantial changes in the operations of bulk power systems and electricity markets. In this paper, we develop a data-driven analysis to substantiate the pandemic's impacts from the perspectives of power system security, electric power generation, electric power demand and electricity prices. Our results suggest that both electric power demand and electricity prices have discernibly dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic. Geographical variances in the impact are observed and quantified, and the bulk power market and power system operations in the northeast region are most severely affected. All the data sources, assessment criteria, and analysis codes reported in this paper are available on a GitHub repository.