Power demand on the largest US grid surged to a record this week as a searing heat dome continues to hover over the east of the country on Friday, halting some Independence Day festivities in the nation's capital.
PJM Interconnection LLC, a power grid serving 67 million people across 13 states from the District of Columbia to Chicago, said demand on July 2 likely surpassed the previous record of 165.563 gigawatts set in August 2006.
The dangerous heat wave has brought triple-digit temperatures to many American cities. The Great American State Fair — a two-week festival of patriotic-themed events along the National Mall in Washington — closed for several hours Friday amid the heat. Activities would resume in the evening, event organizers said in a social media post.
The hot weather underscores the extent increasingly extreme temperatures are reshaping American life, and the systems that underpin it. More than 197 million people spanning from Kansas to Maine found themselves under extreme heat warnings or heat advisories on Friday, according to the US Weather Prediction Center.
The heat is hitting ahead of the July 4 celebrations for America's 250th birthday and another busy weekend of World Cup football, with homes and businesses lifting power consumption as they turn to air conditioning for relief. New Jersey Transit said some rail services were suspended due to the impact on equipment related to extreme temperatures.
Even before the latest bout of intense heat, US grids were struggling with a data center buildout that has upended two decades of stagnant power demand. And now they're even more susceptible to outages in periods of extreme temperature fluctuations, with implications for everything from residential air conditioners to hospital lighting.
Consolidated Edison Co., which runs New York City's electric utility, said Friday it had temporarily cut off power to almost 10,000 customers in southwest Queens due to equipment problems as a result of the extreme heat and heavy demand for power. Earlier, it had asked tens of thousands of customers across the region to conserve energy, throttling back voltages.
Those households were asked to not use washers, dryers and microwaves, and to use only one air conditioner if they have two, the utility said in a statement.
“Today looks to be quite oppressive,” Frank Pereira, a senior branch forecaster at the center, said by phone, noting “well-above-normal temperatures from the Plains and Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.”
The PJM grid, home to “data-center alley” in Northern Virginia, published a swathe of emergency alerts this week as temperatures climbed. The Department of Energy issued an order to ensure that all generating units would operate at maximum capacity, including backup sources, to prevent blackouts. That's already the second time it has had to do so this summer.
Despite all that, demand looks to have hit a record, with an official figure to come after a 60-day period needed to calculate the performance of its demand response resources. Data on Thursday had showed that instantaneous load was approximately 162.7 gigawatts between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., but that had been suppressed.
It had previously said a record this summer was “unlikely, but plausible.”
Temperatures in Central Park touched 98F on Friday afternoon local time, a day after the city experienced its hottest day since 2012 with the heat hitting 100F. Oppressive temperatures and humidity are forecast across the city and the eastern half of the US through the weekend.
While electricity usage is set to ease slightly Friday amid holiday travel, cooling demand may spike again as the hot and humid conditions persist. The risk of failures at power plants or other critical equipment rises with high sustained demand.
Record demand on the PJM would mean it's operating at over 90% of its capacity. But some of that dropped out as temperatures climbed. There were about 9.5 gigawatts of generation outages in the mid-Atlantic region, including data centers concentrated in Northern Virginia. A gigawatt is equal to the capacity of a traditional nuclear reactor.
The latest strain is likely to add to pressure for an overhaul of the nation's grids, both to add new generation and ensure sufficient flexibility. Prices in some parts of PJM soared to over $2,500 per megawatt hour this week.
“We need to treat grid flexibility as part of everyday operations, not just crisis response,” said Jigar Shah, a former US Department of Energy official.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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