Techno-economic Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Italian Electricity System

Since the end of 2019, the sadly known Sars-CoV2 has firstly spread to China and then to the rest of the world, giving rise to the pandemic known as COVID-19. The high number of deaths and the stressful conditions of public health systems suggested governments to impose social restrictions to contain the virus diffusion. The adopted measures differed from country to country, but they often resulted in the closure of schools, workplaces and meeting places. In Italy, in addition to local restrictions adopted in the areas where the health situation was particularly severe, the decree law of March 4, 2020 imposed social restrictions for the entire country (e.g. closure of schools and ban on gatherings). Subsequently, with a series of decree laws, the measures became more severe and on March 22, 2020 the government imposed the lockdown of all face-to-face activities related to production chains concerning nonessential goods. These decrees implicated a considerable reduction in the electrical demand with consequent impacts on both electrical markets and operation strategies of the Transmission System Operator (TSO). Due to the low demand, compared to usual load conditions, fewer conventional power plants were dispatched in the Day Ahead Market; therefore, a decrease in the price of energy occurred, as well as an increment of the renewable penetration. At the same time, conventional power plants played a key role in the Ancillary Services Market to ensure the safe operation of the transmission system. In this work, the reduction of the electrical demand and its impacts on both electrical markets and network operation strategies are analysed and discussed for the Italian power system.