Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Energy Demand in Estonia

TL;DR

This paper presents a linear regression model to analyze the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on Estonia's energy demand, accounting for seasonal and weather factors, validated with real data for economic insights.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, accurate linear regression approach that isolates COVID-19 effects on energy consumption, improving analysis over existing methods.

Findings

Model effectively removes weekly and weather effects from data.

Enables qualitative analysis of COVID-19's economic impact.

Validated with real Estonia energy consumption data.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a question of how to measure and evaluate adequacy of the applied restrictions. Available studies propose various methods mainly grouped to statistical and machine learning techniques. The current paper joins this line of research by introducing a simple-yet-accurate linear regression model which eliminates effects of weekly cycle, available daylight, temperature, and wind from the electricity consumption data. The model is validated using real data and enables the qualitative analysis of economical impact.