Electricity Consumption Lower and Lower in Hungary

Electricity consumption in Hungary continued to fall in May, continuing a negative trend for almost a year. For the first time, the monthly production of domestic solar parks was already higher than that of natural gas-fired power plants, portfolio.hu reports.

In the last month of spring this year, total gross monthly consumption of the domestic electricity system was 8.6% lower than in May 2022.

The 3,317.4 GWh of electricity demand is lower than the 3,324.6 GWh recorded in May 2020, which was seen during the first wave of the coronavirus epidemic and resulted in a 10.5% year-on-year drop, and marks a fifteen-year low in electricity consumption.

In order to find a lower May electricity consumption than the current one in the statistics, one has to look back to May 2009 (3,250.3 GWh).

The fall in electricity demand is driven mainly by savings motivated by high prices and investments to increase energy efficiency, but also by the forced weakening of economic activity in firms.

Monthly average temperatures, which also have a major impact on consumption, were 16.8 degrees Celsius, 1.4 degrees lower than a year ago, meaning that electricity consumption has fallen this year despite higher heating demand than last year. This means that the year-on-year decline in electricity consumption has now lasted for 12 months.

This negative streak is longer than the six-month negative streak seen between April and September 2020 as a result of the Crown virus, but it is still below the 14-month decline from October 2008 to November 2009, when the 2008 crisis hit.

The record is held by the period of regime change, when the collapse of the socialist economy led to a year-on-year fall in consumption in every single month for 24 months from March 1991 to February 1993.

In 2022, the annual real electricity demand (45,758 GWh) fell by 2.48% compared to 2021, while in the first five months of 2023, the total electricity consumption (18,381.5 GWh) was 7.5% lower than in the same period of 2022 (excluding the household-sized small power plants and other power plants producing for own consumption).