Electricity demand has been sluggish or decreasing since the Lehman shock. In particular, the declining trend of demand for home use and business use is remarkable compared with before the Lehman shock, due to change of lifestyle by smartphone, diffusion of LED and solar power generation. In addition to the long-term factor of declining population, these factors of power consumption reduction are expected to continue in the future, and it is a view that it is likely that demand will be sluggish and present trends will continue for a while(demand of electricity).
So what will happen in the long run?
Many power-related experts anticipate a reversal of long-term power demand. This is because they expect to increase demand by electrification, such as electrification of household heat demand and popularization of electric vehicles.
What is in the background that “electrification” is claimed?
There is a change in supply structure on the background that electrification is taking the spotlight. The overwhelming supply of renewable energy is becoming obvious, and in addition, from the standpoint of decarbonization, the idea that electricity demand should be promoted is becoming a global trend.
In Germany, efforts such as exporting surplus of renewable energy to neighboring countries, using it for pumped electricity generation, etc. have reached their limits. For this reason, electric energy is expanded to other uses of energy by a method such as to charge the battery of an electric vehicle (Power-to-Mobility), electrolysis and utilize hydrogen for fuel cells (Power-to-Gas) . This idea, which is called “Sector-Coupling”, changes the structure of energy demand by changing the actual state of supply structure , thereby simultaneously solving the problem both surplus electric power and decarbonization. In addition to Germany, similar idea is gradually spreading in other continents Europe and the United States.
Kyushu Electric Power Co conducted the first renewable output control on the main island on October 13. It is no doubt that this movement will also spread to other power companies such as Shikoku, Chugoku, Tohoku Electric Power and others. In resource small countries like Japan, we can not help saying that output control of renewable energy is “a wasteful” policy and it will be difficult to continue to gain general understanding after normalization of supply control.
Electrification expansion is derived from such supply side circumstances. Conventional demand forecast has mainly taken electric power demand as an independent variable and prediced its trend. In the future, the era in which a dynamic way of thinking is required with sufficient consideration of mutual relations with supply has come.