COVID-19 causes drop in electric demand across Hawaii

With tourism shuttered, businesses closing and thousands sheltering at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hawaiian Electric has reported a significant drop-off in demand, reaching as high as 14 percent on Maui.

As of the week of March 22, the utility also reported average peak demands of seven percent less on Oahu and Hawaii Island. This was especially driven by the closure of schools, offices, government buildings, hotels and businesses across Maui and Oahu, where peak daytime demand fell 21 percent and 16 percent, respectively, after March 22. Sunny days and private rooftop solar systems have also helped create record lows for daytime generation.

But the driving force for the change was a stay-at-home order issued by Gov. David Ige on March 23, followed by a mandatory quarantine on visitors to the island state.

“Such fast and pronounced changes in demand are something we haven’t seen before and they’re a measure of how quickly business activity and individual behavior were affected by the pandemic,” Jim Kelly, vice president of corporate relations at Hawaiian Electric, said. “Hawaii reflects the trends that utilities everywhere are seeing as economies adjust to the impacts of COVID-19.”

One upside of the reduction in consumption is that there is no worry at all about consumers having an adequate supply of electricity. Demand is so low that about 200,000 fewer gallons of oil per day are now being used to generate electricity on Oahu, Hawaiian Electric said.

This reflects larger trends nationwide. The University of Chicago reported last week that total U.S. electricity consumption had fallen 5 percent from December 2019, with far larger plummets in harder hit areas like New York City and Southern California. This has, in turn, reduced particulates from power generation by as much as 72 percent since December.