A thread on what electricity consumption in the US is foreshadowing for COVID-19's economic impact: 
The data are still coming together, but the pictures are sufficiently clear and consistent across multiple sources that it's worth sharing these numbers with the caveat that revisions may change the picture for individual areas substantially. Apologies for hasty formatting.
You can find more background in this thread about the statistics from Europe:
Electricity consumption in New York City is down about 13%, which is where the EU is on average at the moment.
This area covers NJ, MD, DC, most of PA. They're down about 7% --but I'm finding that large areas give less clear pictures. Consumption is highly sensitive to local temperature, so smaller regions tend to have more informative temperature fluctuations.
For example, here's next door in Dayton, OH:
And Northern Ohio:
In fact, it didn't look like there was anything going on in California at all until I could break it down by zone (and also try to control for behind the meter solar). Here's Southern California Edison:
And Pacific Gas & Electric in the northern half of CA:
It's not just the coasts, here's Chicago:
Colorado:
Oklahoma:
Yikes Nevada*.
*Data reported directly to @EIAgov instead of wholesale markets, so these data may be much more heavily revised.
*Data reported directly to @EIAgov instead of wholesale markets, so these data may be much more heavily revised.
There are a number of places that don't appear to show much impact as well. Not a lot going on in Florida*:
(*also not market data)
(*also not market data)
Or Kansas:
But the overall picture is of significant declines in electricity consumption. Why is this important? In the short term, there aren't a lot of substitutes away from grid power, so usage tends to scale with economic activity.
Here was the relationship between (smoothed) wholesale electric power and unemployment during the Great Recession, relative to Dec 2007 (the official start date).
As @JustinWolfers describes here--we're running into a really tough period of lagging statistics while the economic situation is changing quickly. Monitoring electricity consumption in near-real time can be useful in filling in that void.
