Despite the coronavirus pandemic, electricity consumption in Hungary increased in March, contrary to international trends. Although electricity consumption decreased in April, we used less electricity than in the same period last year, but the decline stopped by the end of the month, and daily consumption stabilized at 106-108 GWh. Due to the extraordinary situation, gross electricity consumption was 9,1% lower in the fourth month of the year compared to April 2019. The decrease in consumption is mainly due to the impact of the pandemic, however, despite the large decline in April, electricity consumption in the first four months of 2020 (cumulative) is only 0,35% (55 GWh) lower than in January-April last year.

Hungarian power plants are performing well even in this situation, thus electricity imports fell sharply in April. In contrast to the typical 30-3%, the average import ratio to gross consumption was 20,2%.

Due to the continuous operation of the nuclear power plant and the spread of grid and household-sized solar panels, there was a period in April when the share of total carbon-neutral electricity production approached 85%. (This was recently reported here.) For the full month, carbon-neutral production exceeded 70% of total domestic electricity production - one-fifth of this was provided by renewables and the remaining 80% was provided by the Paks Nuclear Power Plant.