Hourly County Electricity Demand Profiles for the Contiguous U.S. (2016-2023)

Estimated hourly electricity demand profiles for each county in the contiguous United States from 2016 to 2023. The data combines weighted averages of reported hourly demand from balancing authority regions with modeled distributed photovoltaic capacity factors, scaled to match annual county-level electricity estimates.

Use Cases

• Model grid load patterns by county using the hourly demand profiles and distributed photovoltaic capacity factor data.
• Analyze the impact of distributed photovoltaic generation on county-level electricity demand across different sectors.
• Allocate annual retail sales and direct use electricity estimates to hourly profiles for regional energy planning.
• Compare estimated county-level electricity consumption derived from state-level utility reports and population shares.

Strengths

• Covers 8 years of hourly data from 2016 to 2023.
• Provides county-level granularity for the entire contiguous United States.
• Methodology is transparent with open-source Python code available for replication.
• Integrates multiple data sources including utility reports, balancing authority data, and photovoltaic modeling.

Limitations

• Estimates are derived from aggregated state-level data and population allocations, not direct county-level measurements.
• The underlying utility-reported sales and net metering data may have reporting inconsistencies across states.
• Modeled distributed photovoltaic capacity factors introduce assumptions that may not capture local weather variations perfectly.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Energy.

Collection Method

Estimated from weighted averages of reported balancing authority demand and modeled distributed photovoltaic profiles, scaled to annual county-level electricity estimates.

Time Range

2016 to 2023.

Freshness

Data updated to 2023, with metadata last updated in February 2026.

Geography

Contiguous United States, at the county level.