Co-occurrence of high relative humidity levels and high temperatures can increase human discomfort, thereby affecting electricity requirements for space cooling. While relative humidity is generally projected to decrease over land in a warming climate, the combined impact of warming and changes in humidity on heat stress, and thus electricity demand, are less clear. To evaluate the role of relative humidity in determining future electricity demand over the southeastern United States, we first develop predictive models based, separately, on temperature and a heat stress index and then apply the models to a set of high-resolution climate projections. We find that the heat stress index-based models project higher demand across all the southeastern electricity regions as compared to the temperature-based models. Given that the amplification of demand happens across the whole range of temperature distribution, we expect the future demand to be high even outside the peak season for hot extremes. This study emphasizes the importance of considering humidity in future heat stress and electricity demand assessments.
Publication:
Rastogi, D., Lehner, F., Kuruganti, T., Evans, K. J., Kurte, K., & Sanyal, J. (2021). The role of humidity in determining future electricity demand in the southeastern United States. Environmental Research Letters, 16(11), 114017, https://doi.org/ 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2fdf/
