Consumption of electricity decreases 12% in April

Electricity consumption fell 12% in April, or 13.8% when correcting for the effects of temperature and the number of working days. You have to go back to August 2004 to find a monthly consumption figure as low as this month. The annual cumulative shows an annual change of less 2.6%, which does not change after the correction for temperature and working days.

In December, the hydrological conditions remained favourable, leading to a hydropower capability index of 1.17 (historical average of 1), whereas in wind generation the corresponding index was 0.85 (historical average of 1). Renewable production fuelled 69% of domestic consumption, non-renewable production accounted for 17%, while the remaining 14% were supplied with imported energy.

In the first four months of the year, the hydropower capability index stood at 0.96 (historical average of 1), whereas the wind-power capability index was 0.86 (historical average of 1). In this period, renewable production supplied 69% of consumption, broken down into 35% for hydropower, 26% for wind power, 6% for biomass, and 2% for photovoltaics. Non-renewable production supplied 28% of the consumption with virtually only natural gas. Coal power production, which had been extremely low, fell to zero in April, which was a first since the current coal power plants of Sines and Pego started operating in 1985. The import balance in the first quarter favoured imports, amounting to around 2.3% of the domestic consumption.

In the natural gas market, domestic consumption fell 26% in April, with a drop of 13% in the conventional segment and of 66% in the power production segment. In the period between January and April, there was year-on-year rise in consumption of 6.6%, due to the positive behaviour of the electricity market in the first quarter. Consumption in the conventional segment fell 4.1% in this period.