Impact of COVID-19 on power system load: The case from Oman

Alyafai, A.; Al-Shabibi, M. S.; Rao, C. V.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the governments around the world were compelled to reduce business activity and took measures in response to minimize the impact of coronavirus. Under this condition the people lifestyle has been changed due to lockdown restrictions and other measures. Hence the electricity sector significantly affected under circumstance of COVID-19. The system demand and total energy consumptions in network is impacted by COVID-19.The main aim this paper is to review, analyze the weak links in the system during the COVID-19 time by comparing the load profiles at different load schedules with respect to different costumers. The analysis on the system load is as considered for the year 2019 of April and May months and compare with the same period of year 2020. However, there could be a difference in ambient weather conditions, which also will reflect on system load, the long period load and analyze the overall effect to minimize such weather-related variations effect. Therefore, this study reviews the impact of COVID-19 on one of the power systems loads in Oman. The results show that the peak load reduction, effective utilization of the operation and control on power system. © 2021 IEEE.