China's local-level monthly residential electricity power consumption monitoring

Timely implementation of electricity power consumption (EPC) analysis and evaluation helps assess energy-saving potential and develop energy management plans. Yet, timely EPC data of subnational regions are usually public unavailable, especially for developing countries. Lacking timely and local EPC data makes it difficult to satisfy the requirements for local governments to quickly monitor energy consumption and establish early warning mechanisms. As a solution, this study establishes a quick accounting method for local residential EPC utilizing nighttime light data, based on which we investigate the variations in residential EPC before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Our method has demonstrated robust performance in estimation and proven its reliability. Compared to previous studies, the proposed methodology has four advantages. First, it monitors local-level residential EPC data at a monthly scale, which allows for observing EPC statistics at a higher frequency. Second, it separates residential EPC from urban and rural sectors, which is useful for analyzing urban-rural dichotomy energy consumption patterns. Third, it provides a less costly and time-consuming approach to estimating energy consumption over space and time. Fourth, it covers almost the whole China (except Tibet, Hongkong, Macao, and Taiwan due to data unavailability), providing useful information for achieving national energy-saving goals. Based on the methodology, we see great potential for developing “global-country-region” energy monitoring through satellite image data service globally.