Table 2: Electricity consumption dynamics model

||(1)<br>log electricity|(2)<br>log electricity|(3)<br>log electricity|(4)<br>log electricity|(5)<br>log electricity|(6)<br>log electricity|(7)<br>log electricity|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Trend|0.133<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.115<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.133<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.137<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.137<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.133<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.133<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|
||(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.002)|(0.001)|(0.001)|(0.001)|(0.001)|
|Holiday||||||-0.022<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|-0.022<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|
|||||||(0.003)|(0.003)|
|Cooling||||||0.021<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|0.021<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|
|||||||(0.001)|(0.001)|
|Heating||||||-0.001|-0.001|
|||||||(0.001)|(0.001)|
|End of data|Dec 2019|May 2020|May 2020|May 2020|May 2020|Dec 2019|May 2020|
|2020 daily FEs|NO|NO|YES|YES|YES|NO|YES|
|Week of the year FEs|NO|NO|NO|YES|YES|YES|YES|
|Day of the week FEs|NO|NO|NO|NO|YES|YES|YES|
|N|2143|2292|2292|2292|2292|2143|2292|
|R2|0.711|0.608|0.729|0.860|0.872|0.896|0.902|

Standard errors in parentheses.<sup>_∗_</sup> _p < ._ 1,<sup>_∗∗_</sup> _p < ._ 05,<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup> _p < ._ 01 from trend in 2020, and the seasonality already explains over 80 percent of the variation in electricity consumption (column 4).<sup>17</sup> Next, we also include the days of the week to account for within-week variation, which results for example from different activities over weekends (column 5). Finally, we add holidays and the two variables for cooling and heating periods, as described above. On holidays, the electricity consumption tends to be 2.2 percent lower than on usual days and the effect is statistically significant at the one percent level. Of the two temperature variables, only the one for heating is significant at the one percent level. If temperature exceeds 22 _._ 8<sup>_◦_</sup> _C_ , electricity consumption increases on average by 2.1 percent for every one<sup>_◦_</sup> _C_ increase in temperature (column 5). With 90 percent, the variation explained by our preferred specification is very high and hence it is well suited to analyze deviations from its predictions.<sup>18</sup>

# **5.2 Changes in Indian electricity consumption and nighttime light intensity**

Figure 3 plots the estimated daily deviation of actual electricity consumption from the model prediction from the beginning of 2020 until May 31, and the dashed lines show the 95 percent confidence interval.<sup>19</sup> From the beginning of the year, with the exception of Holi, the deviations

> 17As an alternative to the week of the year, we also included the month. Since it resulted in a slightly lower fit of the model, we use the week of the year in the baseline estimation.

> 18The increase of the explanatory power by the inclusion of daily 2020 fixed effects for 2020 is only half a percent (column 6).

> 19These are the daily dummies for 2020 that we include in the estimation. They absorb the variation unexplained by the model and are identical to (out-of-sample) prediction errors. Using instead the latter and identifying outliers based on robust standardized residuals, as suggested by (Kirachi 2013), results in the same days with below normal electricity consumption (see Appendix C).

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