Impact of urban heat island formation on energy consumption in Delhi

Reducing electricity consumption has emerged as a key area of concern according to the National Mission of Sustainable Habitat of Government of India. Among the Indian cities, Delhi?s electricity consumption is the highest. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of UHI on electricity consumption of Delhi. The study utilizes the satellite land surface temperature (LST) data to compute the district-wise urban heat island intensity (UHII) in Delhi. The electricity consumption and LST data are used to examine the association between them. The scatter plots between per capita net electricity consumption and night-time LST of each district show strong association between them and polynomial curves best fit this association. The equations of these polynomial curves are then used to estimate the electricity consumption of each district assuming their LSTs to be equal to that of the surrounding rural strip (i.e. without UHI effect). The difference between the observed and estimated electricity consumption at observed and assumed (i.e. rural) LSTs provided the increase in electricity consumption due to UHI. The study shows that UHI formation caused an increased electricity consumption of 2600 GWh (i.e. 11.4%) annually on an average over eight districts of Delhi during the period April 2012 to March 2017.