The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the electricity production in Northern Cyprus under increasing installed photovoltaic capacity

The Covid-19 pandemic has been affective throughout every sector globally. Northern Cyprus economy depends on mostly tourism and the education sectors which announced closure after the hit of Covid-19. On the other hand, the island is highly dependent on unsustainable fossil fuels, but there is gradual increase in the installation of Photovoltaic systems in last years which support sustainable power capacity. The aim of the paper is to study changes in electricity production and load profiles before and during the pandemic under the influence of increasing Photovoltaic systems in small islands with isolated grids. Real-time data was used to conduct year-on-year analysis in order to show the impact of COVID-19 in Northern Cyprus. Results showed that the closure of hotels and education affected the electricity production by a decrease of 21.44% in April 2020. Reduction in the power sector remained above 20% until the end of June 2020 and 10% for the remaining months. Compared to 2019 the total annual production dropped to 1.5 TWh which was eqivalent to a drop of 9.6%. Weekly YOY analysis suggested that on the day with the lowest production, during the day, the hourly productions drop as much as 51.28% under complete lockdown conditions. During noon time, where the production via photovoltaic systems are at peak, prior the last two years before Covid-19, conventional power productions were around 132 MW. Between 2019 and April 2021, an addition of 60 MW PV capacity and the loss of half of the power productions resulting from Covid showed that the grid would go under complete blackout. These findings show, due to the high reliability on tourism and higher education sector the recovery periods of electricity in islands tend to be longer than developed countries. Another finding is the decrease in electricity consumption in the service sector,an important consumer and locomotive on the island, where the average decrease is 8.5% above the world average.