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High-resolution temperature fields to evaluate the response of Italian electricity demand to meteorological variables: an example of climate service for the energy sector

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Abstract

The dependence of Italian daily electricity demand on cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation is investigated by means of a regression model applied to 12 consecutive 2-year intervals in the 1990–2013 period. The cooling and heating degree-days records used in the model are obtained by (i) estimating, by means of a network of 92 synoptic stations and high-resolution gridded temperature climatologies, a daily effective temperature record for all urbanised grid points of a high-resolution grid covering Italy; (ii) using these records to calculate corresponding grid point degree-days records; and (iii) averaging them to get national degree-days records representative of urban areas. The solar radiation record is obtained with the same averaging approach, with grid point solar radiation estimated from the corresponding daily temperature range. The model is based on deterministic components related to the weekly cyclical pattern of demand and to long-term demand changes and on weather-sensitive components related to cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation. It establishes a strong contribution of cooling degree-days to the Italian electricity demand, with values peaking in summer months of the latest years up to 211 GWh day−1 (i.e. about 23 % of the corresponding average Italian electricity demand). This contribution shows a strong positive trend in the period considered here: the coefficient of the cooling degree-days term in the regression models increases from the first 2-year period (1990–1991) to the last one (2012–2013) by a factor 3.5, which is much greater than the increase of the Italian total electricity demand.

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Notes

  1. Special days are Easter period (5-day period, variable date), Liberation Day (April 25), International Workers’ Day (May 1), Republic Day (June 2), summer holiday period (July 27–September 2), All Saints’ Day (November 1), Immaculate Conception (December 8), winter holiday period (December 20–January 9), major strikes (25 events), large-scale blackouts (1 event).

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Acknowledgments

The present work was partly funded by the Research Fund for the Italian Electrical System under the Contract Agreement between RSE S.p.A. and the Ministry of Economic Development—General Directorate for Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, stipulated on July 29, 2009, in compliance with the Decree of March 19, 2009, and partly by the EU FP7 project ECLISE (265240).

We would like also to thank the Italian transmission system operator TERNA for its valuable collaboration in providing electricity consumption data.

We also kindly acknowledge Prof. Ruth Löwenstein for her help in improving the language of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento Sviluppo sostenibile e Fonti Energetiche, Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico—RSE Spa, Via Rubattino, 54, 20134, Milano, Italy

    Simone Scapin & Francesco Apadula

  2. Istituto di Scienze dell’Atmosfera e del Clima, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISAC-CNR), Via P. Gobetti, 101, 40129, Bologna, Italy

    Simone Scapin, Michele Brunetti & Maurizio Maugeri

  3. Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Celoria, 16, 20133, Milano, Italy

    Simone Scapin & Maurizio Maugeri

Authors
  1. Simone Scapin
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  2. Francesco Apadula
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  3. Michele Brunetti
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  4. Maurizio Maugeri
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Correspondence to Maurizio Maugeri.

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Scapin, S., Apadula, F., Brunetti, M. et al. High-resolution temperature fields to evaluate the response of Italian electricity demand to meteorological variables: an example of climate service for the energy sector. Theor Appl Climatol 125, 729–742 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1536-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1536-5

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