Quantitative estimation of the impact of climate change on residential electricity demand for the city of Greater Accra, Ghana

What is it about?

This study examined the effect of climate change on the use of residential electricity in the city of Greater Accra, Ghana. The study used monthly data on electricity consumption and temperature records from 2007 to 2018 for residential homes. Fluctuations in temperature affect human activities, especially electricity consumption. The study offers a quantitative analysis of how electricity consumption in the selected area changes with temperature fluctuations. The log-linear demand algorithm is used in forecasting aggregate electricity demand and measuring climate change impacts. The findings show that a unit rise in temperature per day leads to an average of 3.1% rise in electricity usage and the correlation could become weaker as temperature rises. The study results show that temperature changes have an impact on residential electricity demand in selected homes of Greater Accra. The analysis shows that the temperature demand for domestic electricity has increased considerably and therefore indicating that the electricity demand in the region will grow as temperature changes in the future. In particular, the result suggests that the long-term path of residential electricity consumption if all the other regions are also studied, will converge in the long-run. In this analysis, the growth of electricity demand appears to be of much concern, perhaps due to the persistent power outage the country experienced during part of the years under study. We conclude that when drawing any conclusions on the city of Greater Accra case alone, two points should be taken into account the growth in the demand for electricity during high-temperature periods and that the electricity demand will increase in the future beyond what is induced by recent temperatures as the population surges as compared with the day's temperature was minimum as was observed by the trend.

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