Abstract
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated drastic changes in economic and lifestyle conditions, significantly altering residual electricity demand behavior. This alteration has expanded the demand gap between actual and forecasted electricity usage based on pre-pandemic data, highlighting a critical global issue. Many studies in the pandemic have explored the features of this widening gap, which is impacted by major social events like fast virus spread and lockdowns. However, the influence of factors like economic shifts and lifestyle changes on this demand remains largely unexplored, primarily due to the pandemic's significant effects in these areas. Understanding the essential factors affecting the demand gap is crucial for stakeholders in the electricity sector to develop effective strategies. This study examines the hourly electricity consumption and related factors during the specified period. We present a method combining time-series forecasting and sparse modeling. This helps identify critical factors affecting the electricity demand gap during the pandemic, highlighting the most crucial variables. Utilizing this method, we identify the variables that have undergone significant changes during the pandemic and evaluate their effects on the electricity demand gap. The effectiveness is proven by applying it to the dataset collected in German.