Consumers cutting down on power use
Greece may not have imposed mandatory energy-saving measures like other European countries in an effort to limit the impact of soaring power prices, but that hasn’t stopped households and businesses from self-regulating their consumption to reduce costs.
Indicatively, data from Greece’s power grid operator, ADMIE, show a dip in electricity consumption in July, with medium- and low-voltage households and businesses cutting consumption by 27.566% compared to the same month last year.
Moreover, the electricity consumption of high-voltage businesses also showed a 27.542% decline in the same month, following increases of 8.39% and 13.5% in June and May respectively compared to the same months in 2021, but, according to industry representatives, this is attributed to the 50% reduction in consumption by the Larco mining company in July and does not reflect a corresponding trend in domestic energy-intensive industry.
Weather conditions will be an important indicator regarding the course of electricity and gas demand in Greece and overall in Europe, which is hoping for a mild winter to deal with high prices and energy sufficiency.
Similarly, domestic natural gas consumption has also been on a downward trend since April, mainly as a result of a reduction in consumption by refineries, which are among the large consumers and have substituted expensive natural gas with naphtha to reduce operating costs.
According to July data from the Hellenic Gas Transmission System Operator (DESFA), domestic gas consumption fell by 12.8% year-on-year in July, from 6,687,745,973 kilowatt-hours to 5,829,330,209 kWh.
