Every night as a thin thread from 21:00 to 03:00; the thread of Easter night falls below the rest after 11 pm.

A finding in the country's electricity load, 2015–2026

Easter night in Romania's power grid: the hour a country leaves home

On Orthodox Easter night, the electricity use of the whole of Romania breaks from its usual course between 23:00 and 23:30. In the hour after midnight, the hour of the Resurrection service, when people are out of the house to fetch the light, it falls further than on any other night of the year: so it was in 7 of 11 years. In 2020, with churches closed, the drop vanished.

An ordinary night#

Each thread here is one night in Romania, from nine in the evening to three in the morning. It shows how far that night strays from the way nights on the same weekday usually go in the surrounding months. Saturday 12 April 2025 runs close to the middle line: a night like any other.

Every night of a year#

These are all 365 nights of 2025. They gather into a bundle: a whole country switches off its lights and televisions at much the same pace, evening after evening.

Easter night#

The gold thread is the night of 19 to 20 April 2025, Easter night. Until about eleven it is like the rest. Then it falls and leaves the bundle. In the hour after midnight Romania used 321 MW less than on an ordinary Saturday. Of the 365 nights of the year, none fell so low.

Quarter hour by quarter hour#

Since 2022 the load has been reported every quarter of an hour, so the time people leave can be seen too. Every year the thread starts to fall between 23:00 and 23:30, as people walk out of their homes towards church, and falls fast until midnight, when the priest comes out with the light and candles are lit from hand to hand. Then it stays low until three, where the threads end: some stay for the Liturgy, others go to bed, and holiday nights sink towards morning anyway, as Pentecost eve does, a little, every year. The grid cannot say which.

Twelve years#

The same thing, year after year since 2015: on screen are all 4,258 nights measured and the twelve Easter nights. In 7 of 11 years no other night fell further at midnight, and in the rest Easter night never left the top 20. On a simpler measure, the hour after midnight against the hours either side, it came first in 8 years and in the top three in all 11.

The year without the faithful#

With one clear exception: 2020. In April 2020, under the state of emergency, the Resurrection service was held without the faithful, and parish volunteers carried the light to the gates of those who asked for it. That night the thread does not break away at midnight: in the hour after midnight it stays in the bundle. It sinks only towards morning, as Pentecost eve, another holiday night, does a little every year. Easter night 2020 ranks 223 of 366: an ordinary night.

Rain#

Even the rain shows. Only on two Easter nights did it rain at midnight in at least two of the eight big cities checked: 2019 and 2021. Those are the years the thread fell least: 20th and 6th place, against 1st to 5th in the dry years (on the measure drawn; on the simple one the wet years come 3rd and 1st, so the hint holds only on the measure drawn). Two years are few, and 2021 still had pandemic rules, so this is a hint, not proof.

Not the holiday#

Nor is it the day off. Pentecost (Rusalii) also brings a long weekend, but no midnight service: on its eve the thread never fell as far as on Easter night, in any of the 11 years. New Year's Eve does the opposite. At midnight the country is awake, and the thread climbs above the bundle.

Find a night that beats Easter#

Pick a year or type a date: a birthday, a wedding, a final, a New Year's Eve. Its thread appears among that year's nights, with its place. The chart can be clicked: a click on a thread picks that night.

The night that begins on

Easter nights, year by year
Year	Date	Place in the year	Drop at midnight	Rain
2015	12 April	1 / 353	−193 MW	–
2016	1 May	1 / 366	−171 MW	–
2017	16 April	5 / 365	−141 MW	–
2018	8 April	4 / 363	−144 MW	–
2019	28 April	20 / 365	−90 MW	București, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Brașov
2020	19 April	223 / 366	+16 MW	–
2021	2 May	6 / 346	−141 MW	Timișoara, Craiova
2022	24 April	1 / 355	−169 MW	–
2023	16 April	1 / 364	−149 MW	–
2024	5 May	1 / 366	−248 MW	–
2025	20 April	1 / 365	−321 MW	–
2026	12 April	1 / 284	−183 MW	–

What 169 megawatts means#

In ordinary years, in the hour after midnight the country used 90 to 321 MW less than on an ordinary Saturday, with a median of 169 MW. That is about a quarter of the output of one unit at Cernavodă, Romania's nuclear plant, about 706 MW of electricity, and in 2025 nearly half.

How many people that is, the grid cannot say. An empty house still runs its fridge, a full church switches on all its lights, and those who stay home watch the service on television. The only public number found comes from the Interior Ministry, and it is an estimate made in advance, for policing: in 2024 the ministry expected over 2.6 million people at the Resurrection services. This page does not turn megawatts into people.

Britain's grid knows the opposite effect. When a big broadcast breaks, kettles go on together; National Grid calls it TV pickup, and its largest listed surge, 2,800 MW, came at the end of the penalty shoot-out in the 1990 World Cup semi-final between England and West Germany. Romania's Easter night is a pickup in reverse: a country switching off and walking out of the door at the same moment.

The neighbours#

Romania is not alone. The same test on the neighbours' load, each in its own time: every year, Easter night is set against the Saturdays from five weeks before Western Easter to five weeks after Orthodox Easter, taking the lowest point between 23:00 and 01:00. By chance, an ordinary Saturday would come out lowest about once in 9 to 16 years. The rule, fixed after a first look at 2015–2019 and before the run over all years: a country shows the drop if Easter night comes out lowest in at least half the years measured.

On this measure Romania comes out in 9 of 11 years (more than the 7 above, where the night was set against every night of the year, not just the Saturdays around it). Greece, in 10 of 11. But there the drop starts an hour earlier: in the 23:00 hour Greek load is already 5.3 points below an ordinary Saturday, while Romanian load has fallen only 1.3. In Bulgaria (4 of 10), North Macedonia (4 of 11), Serbia (3 of 11) and Montenegro (1 of 8), the drop appears only in some years and does not pass the rule; Poland, a Catholic country, also reaches 3 of 11.

In how many of the years measured Orthodox Easter night was the lowest Saturday around it

Mostly Orthodox countries

Romania9/11

Western Easter: 0/9

Greece10/11

Western Easter: 0/9

Bulgaria4/10

Western Easter: 0/8

Serbia3/11

Western Easter: 0/9 *

North Macedonia4/11

Western Easter: 0/9 *

Montenegro1/8

Western Easter: 0/6 *

Mostly Catholic countries

Poland3/11

Western Easter: 2/9 *

Croatia2/11

Western Easter: 2/9 *

Slovakia0/6

Western Easter: 2/5

Slovenia2/10

Western Easter: 0/9

Hungary1/11

Western Easter: 2/9 *

Italy2/11

Western Easter: 7/9

Lithuania1/9

Western Easter: 3/7

Orthodox Easter eve, one line a year Western Easter eve, when on another day 23:00–01:00

The data clock was checked year by year against the sun (solar output peaks at solar noon). Years when it was more than half an hour off were left out: Bulgaria 2026; Slovakia 2015–2019; Slovenia 2017; Lithuania 2022–2023. * No solar output in the data, so no check: Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Poland 2015–2019; Croatia 2015–2018; Hungary 2015–2019. An hour's offset would move a drop, not erase it.

In the Catholic countries, Orthodox Easter night comes out lowest in at most 3 years (counting the years when the two Easters fall on the same day). Italy, though, has its own drop, on Western Easter night: in 7 of 9 measured years when the dates differ. Whether that is the Saturday-night Easter Vigil or the long weekend, the grid cannot say. And one difference from Romania: in 2020, with churches closed, the drop did not vanish in Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Serbia. What people did there that night, the grid cannot say.

Method#

Data. Romania's total electricity load ("Load") as published by Energy-Charts (Fraunhofer ISE) from the ENTSO-E transparency platform, reported by Transelectrica, the grid operator: hourly from 2015 to 2021, every quarter hour from 2022, to the night of 19 October 2026. 4,258 nights in all. Times are Romanian local time. The data clock was checked two ways: solar output peaks at solar noon (within ten minutes since 2022; before that, with hourly data, within half an hour, furthest in 2021 at 28 minutes), and the weekday evening peak of the load in April and May falls at 21:00 every year, so no year is shifted by a whole hour.

Two measures, in the order they were made. The first, fixed before any ranking: the load in the hour after midnight against the mean of the 23:00 and 01:00 hours. On it, Easter night fell further than all ten Saturdays around it in 11 of 11 years; it was then ranked against every night of the year. A Monday night in October 2026, when the load stepped down (the last night of the series, where data may still be revised), showed that this measure can mistake a step for a dip. So a second measure was added, the one drawn on screen: each night is divided by its own 22:00 hour and set against the median of nights on the same weekday one to four weeks before and after; its value is the mean over the hour after midnight, in percentage points of the 22:00 load.

The time people leave. For 2022–2026, with quarter-hour data, the time the thread starts to fall is the first quarter hour after 22:45 when Easter night is at least one point below the median of eight Saturdays around it (two to five weeks away), each night scaled to its own load between 22:00 and 22:45. The dot on the chart, where the thread leaves the bundle, marks where it passes below the lowest 5% of the year's nights. Missing nights: 2026 has data to 19 October 2026; 2015, 2021 and 2022 miss 10 to 19 nights each, and the rankings are among the nights measured.

The checks that could have broken it. Pentecost eve, a long weekend with no midnight service: Easter night fell further in all 11 years, on both measures. Western Easter eve shows no drop, and Christmas Eve a small one (at most 1.5 points in ordinary years, against a median of 2.8 for Easter). 2020, with churches closed: the drop is missing. Weather: rain at midnight in eight cities (Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Timișoara, Constanța, Craiova, Brașov, Galați) from the ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo; "rain" means at least 0.5 mm between 21:00 and 01:00 (the archive's hourly totals).

What was already known. That Easter is a day of very low demand: Transelectrica reported a record low of about 2,500 MW on Easter Sunday 2025, and a Greek forecasting study describes Easter Sunday as a day when demand falls steadily until 3 pm. The midnight drop tied to the service appears in no source found by a search in six languages (Romanian, English, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian) on 24 October 2026. That does not prove nobody has noticed it before.

Limits. Megawatts cannot be turned into people. The last days of the series may still be revised. 2020 is a natural experiment, but in April 2020 industry was also running slow; the check that separates the service from the holiday is Pentecost eve. The rain finding rests on two years.

The data, for anyone who wants to redo it: every night, as a JSON file (for each night: how many MW above or below the usual the load was in the hour after midnight, the second measure, its place in the year, the number of nights in the year, and the thread drawn, in tenths of a point).

Sources

The next Easter night is Saturday 1 May 2027, into Sunday. Between 23:00 and 23:30, the grid will know again.