How you feelin'? The latest Energy Dept. data says, hot hot hot.
US electricity use was 94.9 million megawatt-hours in the week ending July 22, 2016.
Continental US. Sorry Hawaii and Alaska.
That's 4.1 percent higher than the comparable week last July. And 9.4 percent higher than three weeks earlier, the week ending June 27.
In the week ending July 22, the heat wave melted the middle of the country. The central region (Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas) used 16.7 percent more electricity than in the comparable week last July. The southwest region (Arizona, New Mexico) used 12.2 percent more.
The heat wave, as you must know, moved east.
The national peak this Monday (July 25) rose to 708 thousand megawatt-hours. And use rose to 14.1 million megawatt-hours. Even higher than the Friday before the weekend (July 22).
The mid-Atlantic region, for example, used 8 percent more electricity on Monday than on the prior Monday and 20 percent more than on the same date last year.
These are fairly large numbers. The country used 587 thousand megawatt-hours on average during Monday's twenty-four hours. It takes nearly twelve-hundred gas-fired combined cycle units running at five-hundred megawatts each to produce that much power.
Keeping cool and hydrated at Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
