# Evaluating the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Residential Energy Use in Los Angeles
## 3 Results
### Temperature Normalization
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Month** & **All Days** & **Weekdays** & **Weekend Days** \\ \hline January & \(-\)1.1\% & \(-\)1.0\% & \(-\)1.6\% \\ February & \(-\)4.4\% & \(-\)5.1\% & \(-\)6.9\% \\ March (14–31 March) & 10.0\% (3.5\%) & 1.3\% (3.9\%) & 0.1\% (2.3\%) \\ April & 6.9\% & 7.5\% & 7.5\% \\ May & 9.4\% & 10.5\% & 7.4\% \\ June & 3.4\% & 5.4\% & \(-\)0.4\% \\ July & \(-\)4.2\% & \(-\)6.2\% & \(-\)3.6\% \\ August & 5.0\% & 3.3\% & 11.2\% \\ September & 13.2\% & 15.1\% & 12.5\% \\ October & 10.0\% & 12.4\% & 6.3\% \\ November & 2.9\% & 3.4\% & 2.2\% \\ December & 0.7\% & 0.7\% & 1.9\% \\ Yearly Average & 3.6\% & 3.9\% & 3.0\% \\ COVID-19 Period & 5.1\% & 5.6\% & 4.8\% \\ Average & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Change in energy use for 2020 compared to a 2018–2019 baseline for Feeders A–D showing monthly energy use after temperature normalization. Positive values indicate higher 2020 energy use compared to the counterfactual model values. compared to the counterfactual in the 1-5% range considering all days (weekends and weekdays) (see Figure 5). Comparing change in energy use to median household income for each feeder (Figure 6), a weak trend develops suggesting higher impacts for temperature-insensitive loads for feeders in communities with lower median income. This may be due to disproportionate impact within this population of unemployment or population shift due to the pandemic. The Burbank feeder (Feeder D), while servicing primarily residential buildings, has a business artifact from an auto dealership on the periphery of the feeder territory which caused a small reduction in load early during the early COVID-19 pandemic period in 2020 compared to the counterfactual baseline. Figure 5: Total estimated non-temperature sensitive energy change during the COVID-19 pandemic period compared to a 2018–2019 comparison baseline for each analyzed feeder in addition to system wide LADWP NPL load. Error bars represent 80% CI bounds propagated. Figure 6: Energy change compared to feeder service community median income with a consistent 5% shown in the vertical error bars and the 80% CI shown in the horizontal error bars. The analysis scope was the COVID-19 pandemic period of Mid-March through December. The HDD impact from heating loads decreased in all cases as presented. As noted earlier, 2020 was warmer in early spring leading to potential model bias during the period where SIP would have had the greatest impact on energy use. Electric heating (primarily portable space heaters) is a minor heat source in the region, with natural gas heating being predominant. Another region with higher heating requirements may provide better data for impact analysis. As expected, cooling loads for most scopes increase as temperatures rise from moderate to high, but plateau at very high temperatures, after air conditioning use is saturated. With this said, high heat events did distinctly show an increase in load for a given CDD value; this is especially apparent in the feeders in the LA Basin. For the Burbank feeder, a leveling off of increasing load is observed as the result of limited reserve cooling capacity-all available cooling having already been activated and in use (see  
Figure 7: **(a–d)** Modeled normalized load change for 2020 compared to the baseline period for both calendar year periods (2020 to a 2018–2019 baseline) and subsets of mid-March through December for all periods comparing change in load relative to the baseline for a range of CDD and HDD values for each of the four feeders (**a**) Feeder A, (**b**) Feeder B, (**c**) Feeder C, (**d**) Feeder D. See Figure S2/Table S3 for a similar presentation of this data using normalized MST values and average daily temperatures as opposed to HDD and CDD values. Figure 8). Per [PERSON] et al., warmer areas in Southern California, such as the San Fernando Valley, are less temperature sensitive compared to cooler areas.