Electricity use on the biggest US grid, which serves nearly a fifth of Americans from Washington DC to Illinois, is expected to climb to a 12-year high as intense heat spurs air conditioning needs.
A heat wave will start baking the mid-Atlantic on Saturday with temperatures climbing to 100 F in Washington on Monday, 13 degrees above average, according to AccuWeather.com. Households and businesses relying on the grid managed by PJM Interconnection LLC may use as much as 158.5 gigawatts at about 5 p.m. ET, according to the system operator. That would make it the highest hourly peak demand since July 2013 and is above this summer’s anticipated high, PJM data show.
The all-time high for electricity demand was set in 2006, at nearly 165.6 gigawatts.
PJM’s demand growth is rebounding after languishing for the better part of a decade, as new data centers cropped up in Northern Virginia and spread across the grid. More efficient appliances and light bulbs had halted growth for years. Consumer costs are starting to climb as well, especially after an auction last year to procure supplies rose to a record high for a 12-month period that started June 1.
Power prices for Monday soared to average at $200 a megawatt-hour in exchange-traded contracts, a roughly five-fold increase from Friday’s day—ahead price, said Gary Cunningham, director of market research at Tradition Energy.
“The swath of heat stretching from the central plains to the big apple will bring near record heat to many metropolitan areas, but is happening early enough in the year that power demands should fall shy of records in most areas,” he said.
The East Coast areas relying on PJM will endure much higher and more volatile prices than parts of the Midwest, he said.
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