Open-Access Data and Toolbox for Tracking COVID-19 Impact on Power Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces open-access data and tools to analyze COVID-19's impact on U.S. power systems, providing new methods and empirical insights into pandemic-induced patterns and risks.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive data hub, an open-source toolbox, and novel evaluation metrics for analyzing power system disruptions during COVID-19.

Findings

Identified pandemic-induced fluctuations in power demand and generation.

Proposed new metrics: fluctuation index and probabilistic baseline.

Shared empirical results and solutions addressing public concerns.

Abstract

Intervention policies against COVID-19 have caused large-scale disruptions globally, and led to a series of pattern changes in the power system operation. Analyzing these pandemic-induced patterns is imperative to identify the potential risks and impacts of this extreme event. With this purpose, we developed an open-access data hub (COVID-EMDA+), an open-source toolbox (CoVEMDA), and a few evaluation methods to explore what the U.S. power systems are experiencing during COVID-19. These resources could be broadly used for research, public policy, and educational purposes. Technically, our data hub harmonizes a variety of raw data such as generation mix, demand profiles, electricity price, weather observations, mobility, confirmed cases and deaths. Typical methods are reformulated and standardized in our toolbox, including baseline estimation, regression analysis, and scientific visualization. Here the fluctuation index and probabilistic baseline are proposed for the first time to consider data fluctuation and estimation uncertainty. Based on these, we conduct three empirical studies on the U.S. power systems, and share new solutions and unexpected findings to address the issues of public concerns. This conveys a more complete picture of the pandemic's impacts, and also opens up several attractive topics for future work. Python, Matlab source codes, and user manuals are all publicly shared on a Github repository.