Congratulations! With temperatures hitting 103 degrees in Central Park (106 in Newark) it is officially the hottest day of the year—and the hottest. July 22. Ever. And you know what that means? Those power outages that Con Ed warned us about? They're heeeeerrrreee.
"Con Ed's done a great job so far," Mayor Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show today before adding that "We think this will be the most stressful day on the electric grid in recent history—maybe ever." Boy howdy, he was right.
By 1 p.m. Con Ed was reporting a peak load of 13,166 megawatts (which is over the previous record of 13,141 set in 2006) and that load is starting to tax the city's electrical system. As you can see on Con Ed's helpful service problems map the problems are pretty widespread throughout the city with 5300 people without power in the Richmond Hill section of Queens, 2500 without power in Fox Hills, Staten Island, and scattered outages all across the five boroughs and into Westchester and White Plains.
So, with power in scarce supply, the city is urging New Yorkers to try and use as little extraneous power as possible. And if you are using an A/C, would you please turn up the thermostat to 76 degrees!
