Estimating the cost of summer cooling in Bahrain

In this paper, we propose a technique to estimate the electrical energy used for air conditioning, and choose Bahrain as a case for the summer period, May to October 2016. The methodology uses the high-resolution electricity demand data gathered from the GCC Interconnection Authority (GCCIA) website. In the first part of the study, we present sample daily load curves for Bahrain. In the second part, we estimate the energy spent for cooling. The primary hypothesis of this paper is that since the power demand in summer days is mainly driven by the cooling load, the difference between the load profiles of the cool days with an average temperature lower than 65 Fahrenheit and the hot days (the remaining ones) gives us the cooling demand with a high accuracy. We estimate that 6.34 TWh of electrical energy is used for cooling during May to October 2016, most of which is consumed during June - September months. Moreover, the results are translated into a total electricity cost of 507.43 million USD. To the best of author's knowledge, this is the first study that quantifies the cost of cooling in Bahrain.