SEMINAR REPORT ON

“Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Energy

Systems and Electric Power Grids”
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the award of the degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
In

Electrical Engineering

DR. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY,

LUCKNOW
UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Er. Sanjeev Kumar Abhay Gupta
(A.P., EE Deptt.) Roll no-1708320001
Sem – 8th

S. D. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING. & TECHNOLOGY,

JANSATH ROAD, MUZAFFARNAGAR (U.P.)
SESSION:- 2020-21
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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am grateful for giving me opportunity to make a Seminar report On “Effect Of Covid-19

Pandemic On Energy System And Electric Power Grids”. I would like to also thank my
institute , S.D College of Engineering and Technology, Muzaffarnagar , for giving permission
and necessary administrative support to take up the training work.

I am also thankful to Er. Ankur Saxena , H.O.D of Electrical Engineering Department &
Er.Sanjeev Kumar (A.P.) in S.D College of Engineering and Technology, Muzaffarnagar
for his constant encouragement, valuable suggestions and moral support and blessings.

Abhay Gupta

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 CONTENT
CHAPTER NO. NAME OF TOPIC PAGE NO.

1. Introduction And Litrature Survey 4

1.1 Introduction 5-6

1.2 Litrature Review 6-7

2. Methadology 8-9

3. Impact On Power System-A Global Scenario 10

3.1 Direct impact 10-11

3.2 Indirect impact 11-12

3.3 Implementation measures 12-13

4. Scenario Of Power System During Covid-19 14

4.1 Power sector during COVID 14-15

4.2 The light-off event in India 16-17

5. Socio- Economic And Technical Challenges Observed In Indian Power 18

System

5.1 Socio-economic issues and challenges 18-19

5.2 Technical issues and challenges 19-20

6. Recommendation & Suggestions 21

6.1 Issues to look at right now: During COVID-19 21-23

6.2 Recommendations for the future 23-25

7. Conclusion 26-27

8. References 28-29

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 CHAPTER :- 1
INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE SURVEY

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1.1 Introduction
The driving force of the economy is energy. Energy, economy, business, development and
growth all are primarily dependent on public demand, capacity and affordability. Public health
and safety are the primary variances to maintain the demand as well as growth. The growth and
development were interrupted many times due to disease outbreak such as; Circa of China in
3000BCE, Plague of Athens in 430BCE to the last recent Zika Virus epidemic in 2015 [1] and all
these causes thousands of deaths. The first quarter of the year 2020 is inexplicable to observe
global lockdown due to a new virus outbreak. WHO (World Health Organization) declared it as
pandemic on March 12th, 2020 [2]. This disease is spreading throughout the world and the most
affected countries include mainland China, Iran, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the UK and the
United States. The United States of America (USA) alone experienced 68,797 deaths as of 4th
May 2020 due to COVID-19 [3,4]. As there is no medicine yet, therefore maintaining the social
distancing is the best approach to minimize the spreading and most of the countries imposed
nation/state wise strict lockdown [5–7]. The lockdown, social restriction, travel ban,
unemployment and working from home policy forced most of the people to stay inside the house,
which affected the normal business operation and reduced energy demand from the national grid.
Industries moved to the minimum manual operation or limited their operation. Business reduced
their operation; travel ban almost collapse the aviation industry, small business almost stopped,
schools, universities moved to online mode and most other sectors adopted working from home
policy. The global economy is affected greatly due to these activities and increases
unemployment and poverty. These brings threats in achieving the UN mission of Sustainable
Developments Goals (SDGs). More visibly, this pandemic event has impacted the social and
economic areas of a country [8–11] at least in the following areas:

 Industrial operation and business slow down and the global stock market crashed by more
than 25% in March 2020 [12] and ongoing lockdown can lead to a global economic
recession. It is estimated that the COVID-19 outbreak will cost around $1 trillion to the
world’s economy in 2020 [13].
 The international oil price has dropped in March 2020 to the lowest level since 2003 due
to the combined effect of COVID-19 related demand drop and business issues among
Saudi Arabia, USA and Russia [14].
 Due to the closure of educational institutes worldwide, more than 91% of the registered
student has been affected [15]. However, several schools, colleges and universities have
shifted to online classes to continue education which also effected the power systems.
 Most of the governments and organizations around the world are putting efforts and
money to fight against COVID, hence, there is a possibility of delay or reduction in
funding of several research activities such as renewable energy projects or initiatives. On
the other hand, this pandemic has brought forward few multidisciplinary research scopes
like research in complex medical emergency management [16–18], mental healthcare
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 [19,20], economic revival, power sector management to better manage power system in
such critical conditions [21–23], etc.
 Due to COVID-19 transportation sector is seriously affected and the most affected part of
it is the aviation industry. As the aviation sectoris completely in standstill, the related
service in all airports is also stopped which impacted a huge drop in electricity demand. •
The use of public transport has been dropped as much as 80% to 90% in major cities in
China, Iran and U.S.A. and depending on city/route as much as 70% for some operations
in UK. Although all modes of public transports are not electrical, however in many
countries a significant part of public transport are electrical such as; tram, train and public
vehicles are electrical and less traffic impacted the electricity demand in transportation
sector too.
 The strict lockdown has halted the industrial operation, due to a lack of manpower and
restricted business due to a travel ban as well. All these have indirectly helped in
emission reduction from the industry sector, which is a positive effect on the
environment. Satellite images from the European Space Agency show the drop in
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) level in the lower atmosphere during the lockdown period shows
a substantial reduction in emission in major European cities such as; Paris, Milan and
Madrid during the lockdown period in 2020 compared to the same time emission in 2019.
Similarly,shows the emission reduction across India’s industrial hubs during the
lockdown period.

1.2 Literature review

1.2.1. Worldwide studies of COVID-19 in the energy sector

The spread of COVID-19 has had a significant influence on economic activities worldwide, in
addition to killing many people.13 According to the COVID-19 tracking system developed by
Johns Hopkins University (JHU), as of May 31, 2020, there had been more than 5 106 cases of
COVID-19 recorded around the world.14 Many countries imposed restrictions to slow the spread
of the virus, including closing educational institutions, partial or full lockdowns, requiring
employees to work from home where possible, and so on.15,16 The energy sector, a pillar of the
global economy, suffered a great deal. Because electricity is essential for most economic
activities, we could use electricity demand to assess the impact of a change on the economy, as
observed in Refs. 17–19. In Japan, hourly data for electricity demand in 10 regions are available
on websites maintained by electricity transmission companies. Investigating decreases in
electricity demand could provide an important and immediate understanding of how economic
activities are affected by a pandemic or other occurrence.

1.2.2. PV integration

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 Limited by fossil fuel resources and environmental mitigation, the development of renewable
energy is urgent.25,26 In Japan, with the launch of the FiT system in 2012, PV power generation
started developing nationwide, and the installed capacity of the PV system increased sharply
from 100 MW in 2011 to 10 GW in 2019.27,28 However, with integration of massive accounts
of PV power into the grid, it resulted in compression of baseload generators.29 When the
electricity supply exceeds the demand, Japan’s public power grid gives priority to the use of
pumped storage and regional connecting lines for electricity dispatchment. Based on the current
priority feeding rule, the power curtailment of PV power generation is then carried out to adjust
the excess electricity.30 In addition, to increase the penetration of PV, energy storage systems,31
regional transmission lines,7 hydrogen production,32 battery,23 and other flexible systems are
used to power peak shaving and valley filling. These citied studies focus on analyzing the impact
of variable PV penetration rates on the public grid.

1.2.3. Electricity pricing

Electricity markets are becoming increasingly important for the global energy sector.33,34 By
adjusting the design of the electricity market, new challenges can be met, and renewable energy
can be integrated into the power generation mix. However, the intermittent nature of the limited
knowledge of future renewable energy power generation and the randomness of weather
conditions have profound impacts on an integrated power system and constitute real challenges
to grid operation and management, as well as to the operation management of real-time
electricity spot market prices.35,36

Due to the intermittent nature and non-dispatchability of PV and wind power generation, these
sources of energy are classified as variable renewable energy (VRE). Aimed at assessing how
intermittent renewable production depresses electricity prices, a previous study investigated the
effects of intermittent VRE power generation on electricity price formation in Germany. Found
that PV power generation reduces the volatility of electricity prices by scaling down the use of
peak-load power plants.34 Variable wind power reduced the electricity price,37 but at the same
time increases their volatility.38 The impact on prices has decreased over time in line with an
increase in VRE electricity production.39 These causes difficulties to managers in the choice of
power generation units.

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 CHAPTER – 2

METHODOLOGY

The proposed study aims to analyze the impact on energy and power sector with the
prospective recommendations to encounter the impacts during COVID scenario and also, in
future. To explore and analyze the impacts caused by the pandemic, it demands piles of data
accompanied by tremendous efforts to identify the issues in the power sector in all aspects. Fig. 1
represents the research framework of this study. This study initially focuses on the menaces
created in the energy sector that occurred at a global level, and it can be categorized as direct and
indirect impacts. Direct impact indicates the changes that happened in the grid system during the
pandemic such as power demand variation and the subsequent effect on energy cost, while the
indirect impact details the consequences of the pandemic that revolves around the parameters
which ultimately enhances the energy sector operation such as the implementation of new
projects, investments etc. A data-driven analysis is accomplished for investigating the direct
impacts on the global scenario where the data (e.g. demand load data, power generation data) is
obtained either from the trusted website (open access data) of country’s or regional energy sector
or through requesting them the requisite data (if not open access) for this study. Authors
succeeded in collecting four country’s meticulous power system data, dated within the pandemic
period (that includes USA, Italy, Australia and India). While surfacelevel data is obtained for
countries like France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, UK, China and
Singapore which are grouped as other countries and the impact is quantified in terms of power
demand variation. Considering the indirect impacts, the impact information is retrieved by
extensively surveying the journal articles (Scopus indexed) as well as by scrutinizing the
information obtained from the reputed online platforms such as IEA, IRENA, BBC and World
Economic Forum.

Further, we have decided to step up the investigation of the pandemic impact on the power
and energy sector by at least focusing deep down into any one of the countries. Since the authors
felt that India is a potential candidate for such analysis and also, various reasons were supporting
the claim such as third-largest energy consumer, increased focus towards renewable energy, a
wide range of culture, significant population and many others. Regarding the investigation
methodology, an in-depth discussion was first carried out among the authors, the utility workers
and authorities to figure out the potential issues and emerged practical issues that occurred
during the pandemic. The team of authors is framed in such a way that they are composed of
technical experts in power systems and utility authorities who had ultimately helped in providing
the foundation data that required to build the case study.
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Fig. 1. Research framework of this study

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 CHAPTER :- 3

IMPACT ON POWER SYSTEMS – A GLOBAL SCENARIO

3.1 Direct impacts

Direct impacts emphasise the impact or the change that occurred on the existing working
systems owing to the effects of pandemic. Such impact includes fluctuations in the power
demand across all the COVID affected regions and also, the resulted effect in energy cost.

3.1.1 Power demand variations

Overall, the power systems load can be classified mainly as residential, commercial and
industrial types. These types of loads have a typical load pattern and utility operators manage
the generation accordingly. However, transportation and agriculture load have also become a
significant load for the power grid. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the percentage demand of
electricity for these sectors has been changed and therefore, the new load mix in different
countries has observed. Fig. 3 shows the distribution of different types of loads in the USA,
Italy, Australia and India in Pre-Covid (PC) and During COVID (DC) periods from Fig.1.

3.1.2 Effect on energy cost

Due to decreased electricity demand, energy prices declined in most European markets. The
energy price in the third week of March 2020 decreased compared to the second week of March
2020, as shown in Fig. 10 [34]. European power exchange (EPEX SPOT) market price of
Belgium (BE), France (FR) and the Netherlands (NL) decreased by 23%, 20.1% and 18.2%
respectively [38]. Similarly, the Italian Power Exchange (IPEX IT PUN), MIBL market in Spain
(ES) and Portugal (PT) decreased by 17.7% and 17.4% respectively [39]. However in Germany
(DE) and UK, change of overall energy demand remains positive as the lockdown in those two
countries started from 20th and 24th March 2020 respectively. It is to be noted that the increase
in price was less than 1.8% in the German market for the mentioned week with several hours of
negative pricing averaging of €0.95/MWh. In the British market, the increase in price was less
than 2.8% for the mentioned third week of March. With further continuation of the lockdown,
the electricity demand and the electricity price at different European exchanges declined.

As evidenced in Fig.2 and subsequent discussions, it was observed that the electricity demand
has dropped for commercial and industrial loads but increased for the residential load for most
of the studied countries as the industrial and commercial activities were restricted while people

10
imposed to stay at home and working from home. This has changed the load pattern for network
infrastructure and the energy price also dropped as a consequence. Due to significant changes in
energy demand, operation of the power system has become critical and to handle the situation,
government needs to offer an exigency or emergency plan for users as well as for utility
operators. This study highlighted the current measures taken as well as the future intiatives need
to be undertaken to address the impacts of COVID-19.

Fig. 2. Pre-COVID (PC) and During-COVID (DC) view of percentage demand of electricity load by major
sectors

3.2. Indirect impact

Indirect impacts mark the menaces created on some parameters that ultimately supports the
power and energy sector in numerous ways such as new projects, investments and consumer
relations. Impact on such parameters though does not affect the current power system
functioning, but it would have a prolonged effect on the development of the power systems.
Hence, this section elucidates various indirect impacts that reflected in the power and energy
sector owning to the pandemic. Due to COVID-19, energy demand has decreased in the
industrial and commercial regions; however, increased in the residential areas. Overall, almost
every region hit by the event has experienced a reduction of overall electricity demand by
around 10–30%. The centralised fossil fuel-based power generation has decreased due to lower
demand. However, due to national policies, renewable energy penetration level into the grid
increased and this posed both positive and negative issues [40]. The report published by AEMO

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also discussed the same issues of electricity demand change for Australia [41]. The US congress
website also portrayed a similar observation in the United States [42]. The Department of
Industry, Science, Energy and Resources of the Australia Government have published their
responses regarding the energy sector operation in Australia. They have discussed their current
cooperative role with other governmental agencies and the energy market operators. The
customer connection-disconnection issues and associated financial issues were also well
clarified in this response.

To summarise, the impacts due to the pandemic has posed various challenges and
consequentially opened the doors for new opportunities and improvements in the power and
energy sector. All international organizations and government agencies acknowledged that the
utilities had been challenged to overcome the new normal scenarios. Though no severe issues
have been reported by utilities during the pandemic period, yet they have been preparing to
combat against any unforeseen threats. Utilities are also investing now on improved system
flexibilities to tackle the technical issues due to load reduction and shifting of daily peak
demand. A necessity for system digitalization is another issue which many utilities have
addressed. Recovering economic losses incurred by the sector entities would be tricky. During
the lockdown period, high renewable penetration into the distribution network has also caused
several technical and economic challenges. The stakeholders associated with policymaking have
been observing all these issues for adopting new policies for the post-pandemic period to
continue supporting the sustainable growth in the sector, which consists of integrating next-
generation technologies championed by zero carbon emission mechanisms. These recently
published research papers, news articles and media coverages form the fundamental basis to
formulate the recommendations to address during COVID and post COVID direct and indirect
impacts to build a sustainable power system for the future.

3.3 Implementation measures

Though the impacts prevail in various forms in energy and power sector, some of the measures
that are implemented by the government bodies or the concerned authorities of the respective
sectors in different couries.Thus from the above analyses, it can be summarized that the
following scenarios have occurred due to the COVID-19 outbreak:

 Commercial load demand dropped the maximum.

 Residential load demand increased.
 Industrial load demand also dropped but not very significant in many countries.
 Energy demand price dropped in most of the countries.

Although this section scrutinizes the impacts of COVID for different countries from the
available data, it is an essential task to explore any of the discussed countries in detail to divulge
the concrete impacts of COVID in the power sector. On that note, the Indian grid is considered
as a case study for further deliberations. It has been selected based on several factors as given
below:
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  Third largest electricity consuming country in the world about 1.54 trillion kWh per
year.
 It consists of five regional and thirty state load dispatch centers, one of the
complicated integrated network.
 A diverse category of people across the country such as socially, economically,
religiously, culturally, etc.
 One of the fastest GDP (Gross domestic product) growth nation in the world about
6.68% with a global share of 3.28%. Its composition falls on three major sectors such
as Agricultural (15.4%), Industrial (23.0%), and Service (61.5%).

By considering all these factors, it is expected that the impact of COVID among the Indian
people influences the Indian electric market unswervingly.

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 CHAPTER :- 4

SCENARIO OF INDIAN POWER SYSTEM DURING COVID-19

4.1 Power sector during COVID

India is a vast country of over 1.3 billion people; therefore, the electricity demand is also very
high, although it varies based on population density, geographical and industrial/commercial
development conditions, etc. The power network is divided into five different regions; Northern
Region (NR), Western Region (WR), Southern Region (SR), Eastern Region (ER) and North
Eastern Region (NER) as shown in Fig. 11. The integrated power grid is supporting national
electricity demand. India’s Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO) [63] oversees the
national power grid. India has one of the most extensive synchronous interconnected grids in the
world with an installed capacity of about 370 GW and regular base-load power demand is
around 150GW. Industrial and agricultural consumption is around 40% and 20%, respectively,
while commercial consumption is around 8%, whereas domestic load demand is around 30–
32%.

Likewise, in other countries, the COVID-19 outbreak started in India too and the government
started taking action from the middle of March 2020. In India, Janata Curfew was imposed on
22nd March, whereas nationwide lockdown started from 25th March 2020 and continued till
17th May (as per the recent announcement by Government). Before the start of Janata Curfew,
the energy consumption across the country attained a greater magnitude around 3500GWh.
Subsequently, during the declaration, i.e., on 22nd March 2020, demand started to decay and
obtained a value of about 3000GWh, continued its trend, and stretched lower most demand scale
nearly 2500GWh on 1st domestic power demand.

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 Fig. 3. Load demand in NY during COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 compared to the same in 2019

4.1.1. Regional demand pattern

The regional energy consumption pattern, as shown in Fig. 14, exemplified that there was a
sharp demand reduction in all regions between two periods (before and during the lockdown
period). The load demand dropped in NER and ER is about 22.5% and 20%, respectively, which
is comparatively higher than in other regions. Further, there is a notable drop in NER and ER
when compared with 2019 energy consumption pattern.. Similarly, SR and WR showed a
moderate drop of about 16% and 14.5%, respectively. Contrarily, NR, which stakes a higher
part in all India demand, displayed the least drop of about 10%. This declination exhibits a
significant demand reduction, which posed a severe economic and technical challenge to the
power company.

4.1.2. Generation scheduling

Generation scheduling analyzed the system network operations andperformed economic

dispatch from each generating unit to optimize all India energy delivery with available
constraints. The sudden variation in all India energy demand between pre-lockdown and
lockdown periods wanted rescheduling of the generation pattern.

4.1.3. Frequency profile

During the dynamic behavior of power demand and their respective generation scheduling,
retaining the grid frequency within the acceptable band would be a difficult task. The grid
frequency mainly influenced by the large power stations while imbalance between demand and
supply, line outages, and tripping on the grid. Merely, the frequency is the point of equilibrium
between the power demand and the power generation (without considering losses).

15
Due to the high reduction in demand from the pre-COVID to the COVID period, the Under
Frequency-based load shedding (UFLS) problem raised. It consists of automatic UFLS schemes
with four stages of frequency setting such as 49.2 Hz, 49.0 Hz, 48.8 Hz and 48.9 Hz.

Fig. 4. Effect on Electricity Price (change from 2nd Week to 3rd Week in March 2020) in different European
market

4.2. The light-off event in India

The Prime Minister of India requested its citizens to turn off their lights at 9 pm on 5th April
2020 for 9 min to enumerates the country’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The nations
gladly accepted the call and participated in the event. This sudden change in load reduction, as
well as increase after the event, could have a significant impact on the grid.

4.2.1. Preliminary exercise

To ensure the reliable and secure operation of the system during the event, mock exercise
was planned on 4th April 2020 (before the actual event date) to estimate the actual load
reduction during the upcoming event. It is an essential task to compute the total load reduction
or all India lighting load to conduct the preliminary test. Therefore, estimation of load reduction
was figured using two methods as follows:

 All India load reduction for the actual event was calculated based on the demand pattern
of 29th March 2020 particularly considering the evening peak. It had been perceived that
all India demand was around 101207 MW at 18:07 h and later it was increased up to
112551 MW at 21:00 h. Considering this scenario, it was predicted that the all India
lighting load would be around 11344 MW (difference of demand at 18:07 h and 21:00
h).
 Another exercise was adopted to estimate the all India load reduction based on the
summation of household consumers from different SLDCs. It was recorded about 15085
MW.

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4.2.2. Actual event

The actual Light off event happened on 5th April 2020 from 21:00 honwards. The
preliminary arrangements were made as per the mock exercise.

 The total reduction in all India demand recorded during the event was 31089 MW. All
India demand started reducing from 20:45 Hrs, and the minimum demand of 85,799
MW was recorded at 21:10 Hrs as shown in Fig. 21. Subsequently, from 21:10 Hrs, the
demand started picking up and settled at 22:10 Hrs with a demand of 114400 MW.
 Grid Frequency during the event remained in the range of 50.26 Hz to 49.70 Hz with a
maximum recorded at 21:08 Hrs and a minimum at 20:49 Hrs.
 As the sudden change in huge load may have a severe impact on the network therefore
POSOCO took some actions to better handle the above light-off event.
 After the evening peak, the thermal generation has reduced while hydro generation was
increased to manage the demand. Hydro started to ramp down to 17543 MW (from
25559 MW to 8016 MW) at 20:45 hrs.
 Reduction of total 10950 MW generation was achieved through Thermal (6992 MW),
Gas (1951 MW) and Wind generation (2007 MW) from 20:45 Hrs to 21:10 Hrs.
 The event was managed smoothly without any untoward incident, while power system
parameters were maintained within limits. POSOCO acknowledges the support and co-
operation of all the stakeholders in successfully meeting this unprecedented challenge.
 Advance actions such as switching off transmission lines, taking reactors in service,
changing SVC, STATCOM, HVDC set points, etc. were taken prior to the event for
keeping voltages and line loadings within permissible limits.

From the descriptions of the Indian case study, it is revealed that the demand pattern during the
COVID-19 decreased extensively. However, POSOCO managed this adverse circumstance and
retained the grid frequency and voltage profile within their recommended band. Nevertheless,
they confronted a few issues and challenges during the COVID period.

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 CHAPTER :- 5

SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL CHALLENGES OBSERVED IN

INDIAN POWER SYSTEM
Due to COVID-19, one of the major sectors operating 24 × 7 and influenced on a real-time
basis is the electric power system. Due to the stagnation in the operation of businesses,
industries, and transportation in response to COVID-19, the Indian energy demand pattern
declined vigorously. Particularly, the industrial and commercial load demand has declined
sharply while domestic load and electric load at hospitals/ emergency services have increased
significantly. The change in load pattern has caused not only a financial burden on the power
sector but also enforced many issues and challenges considering socio-economic and technical
perspective.

5.1. Socio-economic issues and challenges

• Economic losses

Percentage share of electricity consumption of different sectors in India from 2015 to 2020,
including the forecasted and actual load demand for 2020. Due to the nationwide lockdown,
particularly from 25-March 2020 to date, the industrial, commercial, and traction load demand
has fallen significantly. It reveals that the domestic load demand has increased from 23.53% to
36.15% whereas the stake of the industrial load has decreased from 42.1% to 32.34%. This
deviation has a noteworthy impact on the revenue of power agencies because power sector
companies/utilities make a major profit from industrial, commercial, and traction load, whereas
domestic loads are supplied at a subsidized rate and hence it consequences a heavy financial
18
burden in the Indian power sector. Table 2 illustrates the electric tariff rate for the various sector
at the national capital Delhi, India, for instance. However, the Indian government has sanctioned
a financial relief package for the distribution companies by providing a three-month
moratorium. Also, the payment security amount has been slashed by half for future power
purchases.

• Reduction in electric bill payment capability by a section of society

Due to closures of industries and businesses, people are not able to go out for work; this will
impact on their salary. In such a scenario, a large section of the society is struggling and
focusing on basic amenities and hence, incapable of paying the electricity bill. This directly
affects the revenue and bad debt of the power sector company. Any shortfall in revenue may
increase electricity tariffs in the future or a burden on the power sector company/government.

• Delay in upgradation/transition-related activity in the power sector

Due to COVID-19, the up-gradation and transition going in the power sector may get delayed.
Due to the slow growth of economic investment by the public and private sector may decrease,
which may affect the pace of transition.

• Financial liquidity crunch and delay in the sourcing of materials

Due to delay and less revenue from the DISCOMs, the underconstruction projects will face
financial liquidity crunch and delay in the sourcing of materials and construction activities. Due
to lockdown, it is estimated that Indian DISCOMs will suffer a revenue loss of 4 billion US
dollars and a liquidity crunch of 7.2 billion US dollars.

5.2. Technical issues and challenges

Due to lockdown, there are many technical issues observed in the Indian power networks,
including voltage and frequency unbalance, overloading of a substation, modification of duck
curve, etc. To tackle these issues to ensure the smooth operation of the power systems, the
responsible agencies, for example, POSOCO has initiated disaster management planning,
including many measures and initiatives.

• Voltage control measures during COVID period

The sudden reduction of load demand during lockdown causes overvoltage in Transmission and
Distribution Networks. Hence, dynamic voltage control takes place at the interconnection and
the transmission level.
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• High-cost generator is put into stand by condition

One of the major actions taken by utilities due to reduced energy demand is to place the high-
cost thermal power plant in standby or shutdown conditions. The optimization measures have
been taken based on the demand requirement allowing all the low-cost generators to run in its
full load while others are on a fractional level.

• Voltage issues

In the Indian grid, various voltage levels from 11 kV to 1200 kV are available throughout the
network to efficiently supply power to the consumer from generating stations to the load
centers. During the COVID, most of the power transformers and transmission lines are allowed
to run in under loading conditions to tackle with the reduced demand. This consequence of
voltage issues-particularly at high voltage level. To overcome these issues, reactors are
committed to service, and capacitor banks are de-committed from the service.

• Fuel availability

Since transportation in India is utterly aborted during the lockdown, import or export of fuels for
power plant operations, particularly coal transportations was not functional.

• Cybersecurity

Due to the pandemic situation, the utility employees are working remotely i.e. work from
home which acts as the number-one priority for utilities to continue their operations effectively.
But, this activity also leads the utilities to new cyber-risks that might be from inside and outside
the walls of its cybersecurity mechanism. This new approach of accessing the plant production
and grid networks from homes raises the risk of outages and safety events as attackers can easily
access the remote systems through the insecure network connection. In order to avoid such a
cybersecurity crisis during this pandemic, utilities should ensure the baseline defense
mechanism by changing the cybersecurity architecture.

• Interruption of power connections

The state authorities instructed the subordinate department not to interrupt the power
connection in the state for non-payment of electricity bills until further notice for all categories
of consumers. This amendment also indicated to postpone the recovery of fixed / demand harge
towards power consumption. This consequence poses an additional financial burden to the
power companies.

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 Fig. 5. Voltage Deviation Index (VDI) between pre- and during COVID-19 period.

CHAPTER :- 6

RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Due to the unlikely situation, the power and energy sector has been hit badly in almost all the
countries in the world. Energy Quest, in its March 2020 quarterly report, wrote: “Nobody knows
how COVID-19 would pan out, whether it would be quickly contained or become a true
pandemic, but it is likely to hangover the energy sector for most of this year” As our lifestyle
now experiences a shift due to the steps taken to battle the pandemic situation, our energy usage
profile has been shifted accordingly. This pattern would continue to stay based on the stringency
of lockdowns. This section proposes some crucial steps that need to be recognized and
undertaken straightaway to continue operating the energy sector in a healthy manner worldwide.
Some recommendations would help utilities to handle the current scenario and the rest
recommendations need to be adopted to overcome future unforeseeable pandemic alike
scenarios, gradually. A quick snapshot of the proposed recommendations is shown in Fig.6.

6.1. Issues to look at right now: During COVID-19

Logically, every utility has enabled its disaster management plan to combat with the current
scenario. However, an event like the COVID-19 pandemic situation is something no one could
ever imagine of. Even a robust management plan struggles to handle the current energy
scenario, which in other predicted disaster cases could have worked efficiently. Starting from
taking maximum precautions for the employees working in the power sector on or off the field
21
to ensuring proper health check-up facilities is a must to operate the power stations and control
centres effectively. To run the power sector safely and securely, we cannot afford the luxury to
overlook the following issues.

• Ensuring maximum safety of employees:

To keep the power plant and control centre safer, the use of disinfectants around the place is a
must. Where a 24-hour service is required, staffs would be assigned roaster duties in shifts so
that if a team gets affected, the whole team can be kept in quarantine and other teams can take
over the charge. The engineers and workers working at power supply facilities must be
motivated through a declaration of proper financial and risk packages.

• Technical operational strategies:

As soon as the demand plunges, electric utilities should take immediate measures to operate the
grid in an optimum way yet ensuring maximum system stability and reliability. Utilities should
utilize the low-cost generators utterly and de-commit the high-cost generators gradually without
losing the grid stability. The power sector should immediately compute the availability extent of
sources such as coal, gas, diesel, nuclear fuel, and water resources. To ensure grid stability,
thermal power plants should be considered for baseload generation.

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 Fig. 6. Flowchart illustrating the recommendations on the operational and policy-oriented management of
power and energy sector during the pre, during and post COVID-19 situation.

• Financial plan:

In due course, utilities must develop a model to assess the possible revenue loss and thus
need to held conversations among the regulatory and policymakers regarding the financial
support from the government. The utilities do not have other businesses except providing
electricity to the consumers. Though the generation cost to produce electricity has fallen due to
23
the low demand, the transmission and distribution cost remains almost unchanged as the wire
costs are almost fixed. Utilities would try to recover the energy costs using various tariffs.

• Power system maintenance:

Looking at the nationwide daily demand pattern, it is seen that most of the industries and
commercial setups are shut down. It is the right time for the utility to intelligently schedule the
generation to allow the spare units to carry out muchneeded refurbishing and maintenance. The
utilities can take this opportunity to inspect the impacts of shutting down a few power plants
alternately in a programmed manner. In this way, a utility may identify the efficacy of the
emergency power plants.

6.2. Recommendations for the future

Severe unlikely events like COVID-19 may occur in the near future to any country. Hence,
responsibilities need to be realized, and steps need to be taken promptly, which would proffer a
progressive impact. Until today many utilities and operators have been operating the sector
incorporating the conventional mechanisms and styles of management. As the pandemic
situation has exposed the severe weaknesses, it is high time policymakers, experts and all
stakeholders recognize the ntegration of modern technologies, mechanisms and managerial
styles to be incorporated with the power and energy sector. Some of the recommendations for
doing so are as follows:

• Gradual increase of load:

As the COVID-19 lockdown will be withdrawn, utilities should plan to allow the relaxation of
the load to increase step by step to ensure grid stability. Otherwise, tripping may occur due to
severe power quality issues. If it is not controlled properly, a weak grid may fall to cascading
effects, which would, in turn, create a systemwide blackout.

• Support to the renewable sector:

Even though there is a drastic price fall occurred for the crude oil, it would not be justified to
withdraw the support to the renewable energy sector. Once the situation overcomes, the oil
market would get back to its feet soon. For example, the Indian government has drafted a bill to
amend the electricity act to protect renewable energy developers and grow the sector. So, for the
time being, it would not be wise not to incentivize the renewable energy sector due to cheaper
fuel availability.

• Tariff restructure to recover financial Loss:

The utilities involved with transmission and distribution network assets would try to recover
the loss due to lower load demand. To do this, utilities may increase the tariff as soon as the
situation recovers. Hence, regulatory hearings would play an important role in deciding how to
divide the cost to recover the deficits.
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• Energy efficiency measures:

Besides an immense interest in renewable energy investments, utilities and policymakers put
some concentrations on the nationwide energy efficiency programs. Some energy efficiency
measures such as fixing the cooling and heating equipment standards, demand-side management
programs, promoting green buildings, promoting energy start appliances etc. During any crisis
period, more and more people would stay at home and the efficient use of energy would result in
well-managed power demand and supply system. These benefits also apply to the new transition
of the work pattern as well - work from home (WFH). Deploying energy efficiency measures in
the commercial and industrial sectors would make a huge difference in the way energy is
utilized now.

• Smart Grid:

Smart grid technology is the integration and smart communication between generation system,
transmission line, substation, transformers and other systems for reliable service to the
consumers. The smart grid is a self-sufficient network system which controls, monitor and
analysis complete energy supply system. A smart grid system transmits electricity more
efficiently, restores power disturbances quickly and reduces operation and management costs.
The complete electric system should adopt smart grid technology for better security of the
system and better integration between customer and utility sector. This technology would also
lead to better utilization of renewable energy sources. Smart grid recognizes the blessings of the
blending of the digitalization of the sector, distributed integration of renewable energy
resources, presence of energy market and implementation of microgrid infrastructures. The
exposed vulnerabilities of the energy sector can be well addressed by fully utilizing the
capabilities of Smart Grid in the respective countries.

• Demand-side load management:

Demand side load management strategy reduces investment cost in the power generation and
transmission sector in order to meet the peak load demand. Demandside management also
allows grid operators to balance intermittent electricity generation from solar and wind plants,
which give a boost to renewable energy sources. The demand-side load management activity
attempts to balance electricity generation and demand closer to perceived optimum, giving
benefit to both consumer and energy providers. National investment in generation and
transmission sector can be well deferred to a later time due to well-planned demand-side load
management programs.

• National Policy:

After the pandemic situation recovers, it is desired to decide on how much the country needs
to generate to accelerate the future economy. This would eventually decide if the country needs
to move to more generations either from thermal power or green energy sources. To build a new
thermal power plant, a good number of skilled people are required, but for renewable energy
25
plants more diversified and generalized background people can work, but their total numbers
could be less compared to the other case. This would have an impact on the job sector, as well.
The government needs to consider various other issues to boost up the power sector-oriented
economy. The country policy would decide if a foreign investor should be allowed to invest or
not. It has both pros and cons for any country. In that case, it is required to check what are the
rules for the lenders who would lend the money to the investors. There could also be a debate on
whether the investment should be in the power generation sector or in the grid or maybe on the
virtual power plants, demand-side managements, or perhaps more corrective market where
consumers become prosumers. A report published by NREL mentioned that Vietnam plans to
launch a wholesale electricity market by 2023, and in Thailand, a dialogue is emerging over
whether the government can continue to support a state-owned single-buyer utility in the wake
of their recent expenditures. All these new projects and ideas would depend on the respective
government policies and regulatory environment of the country. Investment in new technologies
can enable greater power system controllability, but cost-benefit analysis must be understood.

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 CHAPTER-7

CONCLUSIONS
The COVID-19 Pandemic pandemic has had a profound effect on public health, economic and
social impacts and affected all aspects of life, including the power sectors around the world. The
nation and/or region-wise lockdown imposed to reduce the COVID-19 has affected the
operation of businesses, industries and transportation, which resulted in a change in electric load
demand pattern. Due to the changes in work patterns and lifestyle, residential electricity demand
has increased while industrial/commercial load demand has reduced and eventually has affected
the national energy demand profile. Optimum operation and maintenance of the power system
become critical due to these load changes and hence, utilities around the world are taking many
initiatives to tackle these challenges to ensure a smooth operation of the power system. This
study has investigated the direct impacts that occurred during the pandemic in the power system
such as power demand variation including technical and economic issues associated, while the
indirect impact that eventually influences the power sector operation such as the implementation
of new projects, investments etc. From the preliminary analyses, it has been evident that
commercial load demand was dropped maximum while residential load demand was increased
maximum during the lockdown. The study then investigated various issues and challenges faced
by the utilities in the Indian power system, including the essential measures taken to retain the
grid frequency and voltage profile within their recommended band. From the analyses, it is
evident that Indian utilities managed this challenging situation efficiently without much
interruption into the power systems network, including the nine-minute light-off event. Finally,
the lessons learned from the Indian utilities as well as based on the existing researches,
knowledge-based and personal experience, this study proposed a set of recommendations for a
smooth operation of the power system globally during this pandemic condition.
Recommendations are also proposed to gradually overcome this crisis as well as for a
sustainable operation of the power systems in the near future. This study will be useful for the
government, policymakers, utilities and stakeholders around the world to handle this pandemic
crisis as well as a pandemic alike scenario in the near future.

Promote public policies to:

 Verify that green investments will support the expected results, by developing proper
measures towards energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies.
 Innovative technologies and digital solutions are needed to support a recovery of future
GDP in European countries.
 Dedicated policies will be needed to support active transport in urban environments, to
limit the expected increase in private transport.

Power systems have been going through a transitional change in the last few years, with the
integration of new technologies such as electric vehicles, storage devices, and renewable energy
sources. In the midst of this change, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered socioeconomic
27
phenomena that led to very different patterns of energy consumption, and by doing so
emphasized the most crucial problems of this global transition. The current paper focuses on
three such problems: the effects of the pandemic on the integration of renewable sources, its
possible effects on expansion planning problems, and the technical difficulties faced by system
operators. The mentioned open questions concerning the long-term operation and planning of
power systems under the effect of the pandemic.

A key question is how the pandemic will influence the global transition to a low-carbon
economy and, in particular, the integration of renewable energy sources. This question has two
aspects: one of policy, the other of economy. With regard to policy, the pandemic caused a
decrease in consumption, which raised the relative share of renewable sources in the energy
mix, and provided us a glance into a renewable rich future. Therefore, the question is how
policy-makers will react to evidence from the field. On the one hand, the high share of
renewables revealed to be challenging, as it led to low inertia, reduced frequency, voltage
instability, “duck curve” effects, and fluctuating prices. On the other hand, although the
renewable share increased, system operators worldwide were able to manage it without major
failures.

The last but not least major question we investigate in this paper is the need for decision
supporting tools for system operators in times of abnormal consumption. We show that during
lockdowns there was a significant increase in frequency deviations and load forecasting errors.
Perhaps advanced models, for instance, machine learning-based algorithms, may assist system
operators during crises. For example, novel solutions may use new sources of data, such as
mobility data, national health status, and governmental restrictions, to forecast the expected
demand in the short-term, and point out the optimal network topology or generation dispatch. A
central idea in this work is that the pandemic is a large-scale socioeconomic phenomenon, and
as such reveals new data that may help the community to better understand the power systems of
tomorrow. The pandemic, with all its difficulties and problems, provided the power system
community priceless data, which should be exploited for further research.

Most electricity companies took countermeasures to respond to the load reduction due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. These measures contained three main aspects, including the adjustment
of the traditional generation of thermal nuclear power, the penetration of renewable energy
power, and the utilization ratio of dispatch sectors, such as PHS and transmission lines between
neighborhood regions. First, the supply of renewable energy was not influenced by COVID-19.
Because renewable energy has a lower marginal cost than thermal and nuclear power
generation, the penetration of renewable power generation in the public grid increased with the
decline of total load-demand reduction. With the increasing penetration of renewable energy and
decreased electricity demand, different degrees of compression for thermal power generation
and nuclear power generation were obtained in the baseload composition. Pumped storage and
transmission lines in Tokyo and Kansai directly consume the impact of the increased amount of
renewable energy on the power grid without causing power suppression.

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 CHAPTER-8

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