Record temperatures push Türkiye's electricity demand to all-time highs

As temperatures climb to new highs each year, record electricity consumption follows – with rising cooling demand placing a growing strain on the grid during the summer months.

The year 2024 was recorded as the hottest in Türkiye’s history, and the extreme temperatures brought record levels of electricity use. 

By 2024, Türkiye’s average surface temperatures had risen by more than 2.5 °C compared to 1980, intensifying the need for cooling. This trend intensified further in 2025, when July became the hottest July ever recorded in Türkiye. The extreme heat drove daily electricity consumption to historic highs, with peak demand reaching 59 GWh, a new all-time record. As Türkiye experiences the direct effects of climate change, rising temperatures are driving increased demand for space cooling.

Before 2008, limited air conditioning use in Türkiye led to peak electricity demand in winter, driven by heating needs, as milder summers and lower cooling adoption kept summer demand relatively stable, allowing winter peaks to dominate. However, as temperatures began to rise and air conditioning became more widespread, this trend shifted, redirecting peak demand to the summer months by 2008 and beyond. Since 2008, the country’s highest hourly electricity use has nearly doubled, exceeding 59 GWh in 2025.

Between 2008 and 2024, while the average year-over-year growth rate of total annual electricity consumption was 3.5%, peak electricity demand due to cooling effects recorded an annual growth of 4% during the same period. Such divergence indicates that temperature extremes are gradually strengthening the impact of cooling demand within total electricity demand, and this situation is placing mounting pressure on Türkiye’s energy infrastructure. This pressure poses risks, including generation capacity falling short during sudden demand surges, overloading of transmission and distribution infrastructure, and disruption of power system balance.

Meeting the increasing demand with high-emission and costly fossil fuel plants could lead to both rising electricity prices and increased energy dependence in the long term. However, the hours when cooling demand is highest coincide with the hours when solar energy provides the highest generation. Therefore, expanding renewable energy sources, particularly solar, to meet the growing demand is both a climate-friendly and economically sustainable option.

In Türkiye, during months when cooling is needed, each 1 °C rise in average temperature creates a need for an additional 0.77 GW of electricity generation capacity to meet the resulting cooling demand. In other words, an increase in temperature from 22 °C to 32 °C can raise hourly electricity demand by as much as 7.7 GW. To meet this additional hourly demand caused by a 10 °C rise in temperature, Türkiye would need to add new generation equal to 6.4% of its total existing electricity capacity – or roughly one-third of its current solar power plant capacity.

As average temperatures rise, increased cooling demand leads to a sharp and pronounced spike in electricity consumption – particularly at temperatures of 20 °C and above. This indicates that future extreme heatwaves in Türkiye could have a much greater impact on the electricity system. For this reason, strengthening the resilience of the electricity infrastructure against sudden climate-driven surges in demand is critical to ensuring energy supply security.

Since 2008, the difference between winter and summer peak loads in Türkiye has continued to grow. The gap, which stood at 780 MW in 2008, has increased 12-fold over 17 years, reaching 9.1 GW in 2025. In other words, the difference between summer and winter peak demand in 2025 exceeded 20% of average hourly consumption – 6 percentage points above the five-year average of 14%.

During the first 7 years of this 17-year period, the year-over-year growth rate of the summer peak was 1.15 times faster than the winter peak, while this ratio increased to 1.8 in the last 10 years. This trend indicates that total electricity demand during the summer months – driven by rising cooling needs – is increasing significantly faster than in the winter months. It shows that cooling needs have become a key factor shaping overall demand.

The growing gap between winter and summer peaks makes it increasingly difficult to operate the electricity grid efficiently and reliably. This seasonal imbalance in demand forces generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure to be planned around peak loads experienced only during a few weeks each year. As a result, investment costs rise while capacity utilisation rates decline. High summer peaks also lead to short-term overloads on grid components such as transmission lines and substations, increasing the risk of technical failures and outages. 

The impact of this growing strain can be eased through distributed solar generation, energy efficiency measures in buildings and air conditioning units as well as flexibility solutions such as demand response and storage. These approaches can help reduce rising peak load pressures, enhance grid stability and limit the need for costly infrastructure investments.