{"id":234125,"date":"2026-07-02T21:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/234125\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T21:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:09:10","slug":"electrical-grid-across-philadelphia-region-being-closely-monitored-as-area-sees-record-high-temperatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/234125\/","title":{"rendered":"Electrical grid across Philadelphia region being closely monitored as area sees record high temperatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Demand for electricity peaked Thursday across the Philadelphia region as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/extreme-heat-philadelphia-thursday-july-2-heat-wave\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">temperatures reached record high numbers in the afternoon<\/a>. Officials have been closely monitoring the electrical grid, which is said to be under extreme stress due to HVAC systems operating around the clock.<\/p>\n<p>Ed Johnson of Havertown&#8217;s Boyle Energy is busy with broken-down air conditioners.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of people may have issues prior and put it off, and then these temps exacerbate that and they go into complete failure,&#8221; Johnson said.<\/p>\n<p>Changing filters and adjusting the temperature a little higher are ways, he says, to increase efficiency and lessen strain.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When it goes up to 100, 108, if you can maintain 78, you&#8217;re doing well, can&#8217;t do better than that,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the energy grid is experiencing a super load because of all those air conditioners.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been monitoring the weather all week long and have crews strategically placed to respond to outages if they were to occur quickly and safely as possible,&#8221; PECO Spokesperson Matt Rankin said.<\/p>\n<p>PJM Interconnection is the power grid operator for 13 states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Demand for power soared to 163,000 megawatts \u2014 close to the grid&#8217;s all-time record set in 2006. PECO says, for its part, they&#8217;re keeping up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we see is our system performing well,&#8221; Rankin said. &#8220;We haven&#8217;t had any severe outages at this time. We expect increased usage throughout the weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Grid experts expect a very slight break in demand for Friday, but not much.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, union workers who maintain PECO&#8217;s electric and natural gas lines and serve customers in the Philadelphia region plan to go on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/peco-workers-strike-ibew-614-philadelphia-pennsylvania\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">strike on July 4 if demands for a new contract are not met<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demand for electricity peaked Thursday across the Philadelphia region as\u00a0temperatures reached record high numbers in the afternoon. Officials&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32817,28,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-234125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-heat","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}