Abstract: Since China^,s economy entered a new normal, the growth rate of total electricity consumption has been lower than that of GDP, and in some years, their difference is large. A model is established in this paper for calculating the difference between the electricity consumption and GDP growth rate, which is mainly composed of structure effect, intensity effect and residential effect. The model can comprehensively and scientifically measure the specific compositions of the gap between the total electricity consumption and GDP growth rate and analyze the main reasons for their gap. It is found through the model calculation that the total electricity consumption growth rate from the year 2012 to 2016 is lower than that of GDP by 2.3, 0.2, 3.2, 5.9 and 1.8 percentage points, respectively, of which the intensity effect makes the total electricity consumption growth rate lower than that of GDP by 2.7, 0.4, 1.9, 4.9 and 1.5 percentage points respectively, while the structure effect makes the electricity consumption growth rate 0.1 higher, 0.1 higher, 0.6 lower, 0.8 lower and 0.8 lower than the GDP growth rate in percentage points, respectively, and the residential effect makes the electricity consumption growth rate 0.3 higher, 0.1 higher, 0.7 lower, 0.2 lower, 0.5 higher than the GDP growth rate in percentage points, respectively. The calculation results show that the intensity effect is the key reason for the total electricity consumption growth rate being lower than that of GDP.