From Lockdowns to Red Lights: Behavioural Shifts and Structural Breaks in Electricity Demand in New Zealand

The COVID‐19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to implement containment measures, disrupting economic activity and electricity demand. In New Zealand, two key policy frameworks—the Alert System and the COVID‐19 Protection Framework (Traffic Lights)—were introduced over nearly 3 years. This study applies an augmented ARMA model, supplemented by descriptive analysis and cumulative sum tests, to estimate stage‐specific associations between containment settings and changes in national electricity demand from 28 February 2021 to 31 July 2023. The ARMA estimates indicate that Alert Level 1 was associated with a 3% increase in electricity demand and the Red Light phase with a 2.5% decline. The two estimates were statistically significant at the 5% and 10% levels, respectively, whereas coefficients for the remaining containment stages were not statistically significant. Cumulative sum tests provided evidence of structural breaks during Alert Level 1 and the Orange Light phase. The study also documents a downward trend following the removal of containment measures and shifts in daily and weekly usage patterns, offering insights for electricity demand management, infrastructure planning and energy policy under future disruptions.