The impacts of temperature on residential electricity consumption in Anhui, China: does the electricity price matter?

Global warming leads to the problem of climate adaptability, which makes residents’ electricity consumption behavior more sensitive to temperature. Understanding the shape of the temperature–electricity consumption response curve helps plan power investment and production and facilitates a green and low-carbon transformation of the power system. Using data regarding electricity consumption in nearly 20,000 households from seven cities in Anhui Province, China, from 2016 to 2017, this study examined the response of residential electricity consumption to temperature. The results show that there is a positive effect of the heating degree day (HDD) and cooling degree day (CDD) on residential electricity consumption. In particular, under the possible influence of the electricity price and weather factor, the electricity-temperature response curve has a “V”-shape when the average temperature is over 30 °C, and an extra day above 34 °C will increase monthly residential electricity consumption by 2.70%. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the temperature and electricity response curve have strong fluctuations under the time-of-use (TOU) pricing policy change. This implies that the price policy helps regulate the power consumption temperature response curve and thus impacts the power load.