Power outages during hot weather a perennial concern
Associated Press
The mercury touched 93 degrees on Tuesday, and that’s never comfortable in the best of circumstances.
And the circumstances were less than ideal for some households and businesses in Houston and Canonsburg that lost power that day. According to Todd Meyers, a spokesman for West Penn Power, Tuesday’s scorching temperatures caused a power line to overload, and it damaged a wire in the vicinity of West Pike Street in Houston.
Resolving the issue and getting the lights and air conditioners back on for the 1,200 West Penn Power customers who were affected was complicated by the fact that the problem happened in what Meyers said was “a swampy off-road location which made it difficult to access.” He also pointed out that the heat limited the ability of crews to use nearby lines while the damaged portion of wire was being replaced.
The power went out around 4 p.m., and was finally restored by 11:30 p.m.
Power outages when it’s hot are hardly unheard of, but Meyers said West Penn Power, which serves Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, as well as other parts of Pennsylvania, has been able to get through this week’s tropical weather without breaking too much of a sweat. Aside from the outage in Canonsburg and Houston, there was also an outage around State College on Tuesday, though Meyers said it has yet to be determined whether that was caused by heat. On Wednesday, there were some outages in parts of Fayette and Westmoreland counties as a result of thunderstorms. It was “typical summer stuff,” as Meyers called it.
Duquesne Light, which provides power to parts of Allegheny and Beaver counties, has also been able to get through the hot days without too much difficulty, according to spokeswoman Alyssa Battaglia. Duquesne Light “did not experience any major impacts to our system from the extreme heat this week,” she said. “However, we did see minor neighborhood heat-related outages around our service territory that were typically restored fairly quickly.”
A strained power grid is a perennial concern in the summertime. It happens because thousands of air conditioners are operating at once, along with refrigerators, lights, computers and all the other conveniences that are part of our daily lives. When temperatures creep toward triple digits, increased demand can overload the power grid. Transformers, electrical lines and other equipment can be overloaded too, resulting in power outages.
When the weather is hot, officials with power companies offer a menu of ways to relieve the strain on the grid and for customers to lower their electric bills, such as changing air filters, setting thermostats at a higher-than-normal temperature, turning off appliances that are not being used, and avoiding doing things like running clothes through the washer in the middle of the afternoon, when demand is at its height.
According to the Associated Press, the country’s largest power grid operator, PJM Interconnection, recorded its highest demand since 2011 on Monday. Kate Guy, a senior research fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, told AP, “We have an aging grid infrastructure already in the United States, so you can see the impacts of that heat on that infrastructure.”