DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16906656
title: Survey on household electricity demand patterns in Lebanon

description: This dataset contains 1006 answers of a nation-wide survey, targeting Lebanese household electricity demand patterns in Lebanon, collected from March to August 2025 as part of the project “From Off-grid Solar PV Systems to Microgrids in Lebanon” . Households are stratified according to their respective locations (rural or urban), socio-economic conditions (high, medium, or low) and electricity sources (off-grid PV system only, diesel generator only, or hybrid). The data in each category is summarized in the table below.

Each response is provided in an Excel file, containing six sheets besides the consent statement:



Admin: contains the information related to the category in which the survey answer falls,

Information: contains general information about the household, including the number of members, the square meterage, the number of rooms, the availability of a solar water heater, and the installation of LED lights,

Source: contains information on the electricity sources available to the household, including type, average monthly expenditure, PV and batteries system size if available, and the reason for its omission otherwise.

Demand: contains the load profiles of the household. The daily load profiles are detailed through the appliance usage type (year-round or seasonal) and its availability. The consumption from each appliance is then detailed on an hourly basis. The entries represent a change in the state of the appliance. An entry showing an increase relative to the previous cell indicated that a number of appliances equal to the increase have been turned on. Similarly, a decrease means that appliances have been turned off. Blank cells mean that no changes have occurred at that hour, and they hence take the value of the last filled cell. If an appliance is not turned off at the end of the day (i.e., the last filled entry is not 0), it is assumed to still be in use at the beginning of the following day. Fractional entries mean that the appliance has been used for a fraction of an hour at that time,

Unmet Demand: contains the additional demand that households would exhibit if they had continuous access to the national grid, at the current price,

Comment: contains any additional relevant information about the survey that could not be entered anywhere else.


The dataset is fully anonymized, with the collection of direct identifiers avoided, and the presence of quasi‑identifiers coarsened.








Categories



Number completed



Categories



Number completed





Location -Rural



519



Location -Urban



487





Socioeconomic -High



165



Socioeconomic -High



176





Diesel Generator



51



Diesel Generator



72





Hybrid



57



Hybrid



60





PV



57



PV



44





Socioeconomic -Low



148



Socioeconomic -Low



119





Diesel Generator



68



Diesel Generator



75





Hybrid



35



Hybrid



19





PV



45



PV



25





Socioeconomic -Medium



206



Socioeconomic -Medium



192





Diesel Generator



77



Diesel Generator



79





Hybrid



61



Hybrid



65





PV



68



PV



48





Grand Total



1006





 


Data Collection Methodology

The collection relies on a stratified random sampling strategy, where the selection criterion for the each stratum is one of the 18 household categories (combination of location, socioeconomic status and electricity source). Then, households from every stratum were sampled through snowballing and participant referral.

The initial target aimed at collecting answers from 1000 households (around 0.8 ‰ of all Lebanese households), distributed evenly across all categories (55 per category), to ensure as much representation as possible, and to obtain enough information for load profile estimation for each category. Samples were collected from the five Lebanese districts: Greater Beirut, Mount Lebanon, North, South, and Bekaa.

 

Intended Use

This dataset can be used for any research or work supporting energy access analysis, affordability, demand profiling, microgrid adoption modeling, and policy design, with a focus on developing countries.

 

Funding and Acknowledgements

This dataset is based on research supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. (funder DOI 501100011730) under the grant https://doi.org/10.54224/32645.

The survey has been approved by AUB’s Institutional Review Board (IRB ID: SBS-2024-0538). Respondents provided informed consent. No personal information that could be used as direct identifier was retained.