Electricity Load Forecasting under COVID-19

The outbreak of novel coronavirus disease in 2020 has profoundly impacted all aspects of lives and posed a unique challenge in energy load forecasting. With the increase of the COVID-19 cases, governments worldwide impose strict social distancing and limit the mobility of the population, which causes a shift in load consumption magnitude and pattern. In this paper, we first identify the most influential COVID-19 features for load reduction. Then, we propose a new load forecasting model that includes the new features. The case study on the New York City data set demonstrates that our new forecasting model can efficiently provide new load prediction in the pandemic period.