Quantitative assessment of U.S. bulk power systems and market operations during the COVID-19 pandemic

Ruan, Guangchun; Wu, Jiahan; Zhong, Haiwang; Xia, Qing; Xie, Le

Starting in early 2020, the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) severely attached 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. Geographically diverse impacts are observed and quantified, while the bulk power systems and markets 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.