“The idea behind this project as such was a result of a brainstorming session and the exact concept came from one of the Research Group members, Dominik Wasilewski,” says Jakub Tomaszewski, the author of the analysis and a student of Information Science at the WUT Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology.

The analysis includes a map where you can see countries with the greatest numbers of reported cases and tabulated data demonstrating how these case counts have changed day by day country to country.

The students decided to compare the SARS-CoV-2 growth curves for several European countries in their study. They included Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Czechia and Poland. Although the outbreak started in different countries at different times and the initial growth rate varies, eventually, the case count curves are similar for all countries included in the analysis.

Coronavirus growth curves for Germany, Italy and Poland; source: ADek Student Research Group analysis

However, the main part of the project of the ADek Student Research Group is an analysis how the outbreak has affected energy consumption.

“Our project focuses on Italy, but the model is suitable for exploration of the correlation for any country, as long as we feed the relevant data,” explains Jakub Tomaszewski.

The analysis for Italy demonstrates that the energy consumption falls as the coronavirus cases surge. The sharper the growth, the more dramatic the fall in the energy consumption. A comparison of data for 2019 and 2020 show a jarring gap which has been growing wider and wider since mid-March. Certainly, this is reflected in the monthly summary statements for March of the previous year and this year.

Notably, the increase in the SARS-CoV-2 cases has prompted mitigation measures such as closure or limited operation of factories, businesses, schools, cinemas, restaurants or museums, and this effectively puts the brakes on energy consumption.

The data used by the ADek Student Research Group are derived from the website at https://transparency.entsoe.eu/. This is the official website of ENTSO-E, an organization of the European Electricity Transmission System Operators.

“Our analysis is going to be modified in the next few days as we want to include a new factor, i.e. temperature,” says Jakub Tomaszewski.