Economic variables and electricity consumption in Northern Cyprus

The influence of economic variables on the annual electricity consumption in N. Cyprus for the period of 1988-1997 has been investigated. Utilising historical energy consumption, historical economic databases and multiple regression analyses, it was found that the number of customers, the price of electricity and the number of tourists correlate with the annual electricity consumption. The annual energy consumption was strongly related to the number of the customers, with adjusted R-2 equal to 0.906 and 0.930 if the price of electricity and the number of tourists were included in the model. The results indicate that the model using the number of customers, the number of tourists and the electricity prices as regressors has very strong predictive ability and can be used to forecast future annual electricity consumption. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.