A level-one emergency notice has been issued by the biggest electric grid provider in the US. This increases the possibility that its 65 million consumers could experience blackouts throughout a scorching heatwave.
According to meteorologists, the extreme heat that’s already engulfing parts of the Midwest, Northeast, and South is expected to continue this week, prompting PJM Interconnection to publish the alert on Wednesday.
According to PJM, it anticipates having enough energy to satisfy the typical midsummer demands. They claim to have extra resources in store to handle requests as Americans use cooling systems to cool off.
However, they have cautioned that it will be difficult to maintain the emergency funds needed during periods of unusually high demand, such as severe weather disasters. Customers may lose electricity if the electric grid does truly reach capacity.
PJM is in charge of overseeing and paying for on-call generators to keep the electrical networks in those states operational.
PJM is also responsible for managing and maintaining the largest energy grid in the United States, which supplies energy to a 13-state region. In locations that extend as far east as New Jersey and as far west as Tennessee, it regulates the flow of energy.
As hotter-than-normal conditions that have been hurting the South this past week spread to the Midwest and Northeast, regions throughout both states were suffering extreme heat advisories on Thursday.
In order to combat conditions that will feel above 100 degrees, authorities at the Pennsylvania-based operator advised inhabitants of impacted states, like Ohio and Kentucky, to leave their air conditioners on as the workweek came to an end.
The corporation also announced that a Maximum Generation Emergency/Load Management Alert is coming.
Although the demand is expected to hit 153,286 Megawatts by 5:00 PM ET on Thursday, uncomfortably near to PJM’s 186,000 Megawatts of producing ability, the corporation did express concerns about maintaining necessary emergency funds.