Residential Electricity Consumption Behaviors in Eastern Romania: A Non-Invasive Survey-Based Assessment of Consumer Patterns

This study investigates residential electricity consumption behaviors in the Moldova region of Romania, with a focus on identifying consumption patterns through a non-invasive, survey-based approach. Unlike intrusive monitoring or smart metering methods, the survey collected detailed self-reported data on appliance use, time-of-use awareness, and household characteristics across 55 residential units. The analysis introduced an error-based metric comparing calculated and billed consumption, modeled under a normal distribution to assess estimation accuracy. Results reveal a stable dominance of mid-range consumption bands, alongside emerging stratification, with an increasing share of households transitioning to higher consumption levels. Appliance-level analyses highlight systematic underestimation of high-load devices, such as washing machines and HVAC systems, reflecting perceptual gaps in consumer awareness. Furthermore, demographic profiling indicates that in many households, high-duration and high-load consumers differ, with women more frequently assuming dual roles in energy-intensive tasks within the traditional Eastern European context. The findings demonstrate the potential of non-invasive survey methods to capture behavioral dimensions of energy use that remain underexplored in the absence of smart metering infrastructure, offering new insights into demand-side heterogeneity in peripheral EU regions.