Power demand on the largest US grid surged to a near-record this week as a searing heat dome continues to hover over the east of the country. According to reports from Reuters, PJM Interconnection LLC, a power grid serving 67 million people across 13 states from the District of Columbia to Chicago, saw electricity demand surge to roughly 163 gigawatts on Thursday as a brutal heat dome pushed heat indices past 110 degrees from Washington to New York. This fell just short of the grid's 2006 all-time peak of 165,563 megawatts, even after PJM had forecast Thursday's load could top 166,000 MW. The dangerous heat wave has brought triple-digit temperatures to many American cities, with the National Weather Service warning the dangerous heat will persist through the Fourth of July weekend, with heat indices reaching as high as 115 degrees in parts of the mid-Atlantic. The PJM grid is currently operating in an emergency level — at the lowest of three levels — for the third consecutive day, with a higher level in place for certain regions including Northern Virginia's data center alley.
The hot weather underscores the extent increasingly extreme temperatures are reshaping American life, with more than 180 million people spanning from Kansas to Maine found themselves under extreme heat warnings or heat advisories today, according to the US Weather Prediction Center. As reported by Reuters, 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. Temperatures in Central Park touched 97 degrees Fahrenheit on this afternoon local time, a day after the city experienced its hottest day since 2012 with the heat hitting 100 F. Oppressive temperatures and humidity are forecast across the city and the eastern half of the U.S. through the weekend, with hundreds of temperature records — for daytime highs and warm overnight lows — likely to be tested through the weekend.
Consolidated Edison Co., which runs New York City's electric utility, has asked almost 170,000 customers in Northern Brooklyn, Queens and certain communities of Westchester County to conserve energy to allow crew to repair equipment. According to NDTV, voltage was throttled back by 8% to allow them to do it safely, limiting power flows. Households were asked to not use washers, dryers and microwaves, and to use only one air conditioner if they have two. The PJM grid published emergency alerts this week as temperatures climbed, with the Department of Energy issuing an order to ensure all generating units would operate at maximum capacity. There were about 9.5 gigawatts of generation outages in the mid-Atlantic region, including data centers concentrated in Northern Virginia, compared to prior forecasts that had shown less than a third of that, according to Adam Sinn, chief executive officer of hedge fund Aspire Commodities. In northern Illinois, Exelon Corp.'s ComEd utility restored power to more than 45,000 customers after severe storms Thursday night and is working to on repairs to bring back the remaining 10,400 customers.
Despite all measures, demand looks to have hit a near-record, with an official figure to come after a 60-day period needed to calculate the performance of its demand response resources. As reported by Reuters, day-ahead power topped $2,000 per megawatt-hour in parts of the system Thursday, with the Western Hub benchmark settling at $1,222.75/MWh, nearly triple where it stood during a comparable peak last summer. The priciest hour for wholesale electricity prices across the PJM grid will be from 7 p.m. at $739.04 a megawatt-hour, down 40% from Thursday's high of $1,219.91. 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. The PJM grid would be operating at over 90% of its capacity if the record demand is confirmed, though some generation capacity dropped out as temperatures climbed.
The bigger force behind the record demand may be tied to surging data center growth, with PJM's capacity market reaching a record $333.44 per megawatt-day, up more than 11-fold from $28.92 just three auctions earlier. According to Canary Media, PJM projects peak demand will grow by 32 gigawatts between 2024 and 2030, with all but 2 gigawatts of that increase coming from data centers. Independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics has tied 63 percent of that run-up to data center demand, a tab of roughly $9.3 billion now landing on ratepayers. During a comparable late-June peak this year, natural gas supplied 44 percent of PJM's generation, coal another 19 percent, nuclear 20 percent and solar just 6 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The sprawling heat dome adds another major complication: grids that typically rely on each other for spare supplies may limit supplies to neighbors to keep their systems stable.
