U.S. electricity consumption is recovering from the lows seen during the peak of the pandemic last year, but a full recovery to the 2019 levels will only be seen next year, Lynn Good, president and chief executive officer of one of the biggest U.S. utilities, Duke Energy, told Yahoo Finance this week. Duke Energy suffered a decline in electric usage driven by a fall in demand from industrial customers, as well as commercial customers such as colleges, universities, and restaurants, Good said. For the whole year of 2020, the decline in electricity load was about 3 percent, although at the start of the pandemic, it was 10-15 percent at industrial customers, she added. Duke Energy serves some 7.8 million customers across six states in the Midwest and the South. Going forward, Duke Energy is optimistic about electricity demand recovery. “We are optimistic about the rebound,” Good told Yahoo Finance. […]