NC braces for sweltering Fourth of July heat. Will the power grid hold up?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Raleigh is forecast to reach 107 degrees on Saturday.
- Duke Energy says it is well equipped with detailed plans to manage the grid during heat.
- Households can limit their power use by lowering their thermostat.
Air conditioners will be on full blast this blistering Fourth of July weekend, placing strain on North Carolina’s power grid as energy companies nationwide prepare for record demand.
Temperatures in the Triangle are forecast to soar into the triple digits this weekend, with Raleigh reaching 107 degrees on Saturday with the region also under a heat advisory Friday.
But as many locals enjoy America’s 250th birthday from the comfort of their own air conditioner, energy companies across the country and in the Triangle are working to keep up with the high demand.
“Especially as it gets hotter outside, people tend to crank up the thermostat,” said Duke Energy spokesperson Logan Stewart. “The AC, or the heat in the wintertime, accounts for more or less 50% of your energy bill everywhere. As people do that it does tend to drive up demand on the grid.”
Could the Triangle see power blackouts this weekend?
Likely not. According to Stewart, Duke Energy is well equipped for the extreme heat, familiar with the blazing heat of the Southeast as a major power provider for the Carolinas.
The company has a team of meteorologists tasked with assessing weather events and making sure customers won’t have their service interrupted, Stewart said. Those energy forecasts rely on data from previous years and the resources the company currently has available, like new power plants or solar and battery systems.
“We anticipate this kind of stuff, and we have a detailed plan in place to manage the grid in extreme conditions, whether it’s this heat or whether it’s a storm,” she said.
And within Duke Energy’s preparations, blackouts — which the company defines more as “an interruption in service” — are seen as the ultimate last resort, only used if they’d “exhausted every single other tool in the toolbox
“We can purchase power, we can implement these programs, and we would do all of those things before you know we would ever do anything with any kind of outages,” Stewart said.
How is the power grid balancing the demand?
In addition to calling on its power plants to provide electricity during peak demand, Duke Energy also offers incentives to customers who help them “curtail the load” by pulling back their energy consumption. Through the company’s EnergyWise Home program, customers are given monthly bill credits for reducing their usage during peak demands like a heatwave.
Those customers pre-cool their home before shutting off their cooling systems to help save energy during periods of high demand. And Duke Energy requires all industrial customers, including some data centers, to opt into the program and conserve their high energy intake during the peaks.
But Duke can also buy power from systems in other states in the event of a shortage — though it could be difficult to find any willing sellers as states across the country prepare their own systems for the extreme heat, said Jordan Kern, an associate professor at N.C. State University specializing in energy systems.
“Our neighboring systems in South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, all the way up through the mid-Atlantic are also going to be experiencing really exceptional heat, and so everybody’s going to be kind of tight, so I don’t think they may be doing that,” he said.
When has North Carolina experienced a ‘rolling blackout?’
Still, there’s always some risk during extreme weather like Raleigh’s heatwave, Kern said.
In December 2022, Duke Energy enacted rolling blackouts for the first time in North Carolina’s history in an attempt to offset grid demand due to freezing temperatures during Winter Storm Elliott. The blackouts paused power for about 500,000 customers, with some remaining in the dark for hours.
Kern said a blackout is an inconvenience for everyone — only used if all else fails.
“Rolling blackout is the last choice,” Kern said. “Nobody wants it — Duke doesn’t want to do that, customers don’t want to do it. Everybody loses. So they would only be doing that if they absolutely had to.”
How should residents limit their power use this weekend?
There are no active requirements to limit power intake, but as thermostat use makes up about 50% of energy bills, consuming less energy this weekend could save you money while also taking pressure off the power grid.
To limit use, households should set their thermostat a few degrees higher than typically comfortable, Stewart said.
“The closer you can get the temperature inside your home to the temperature outside your home, the lower your energy use, and the less your bill is going to be,” Stewart said.
Stewart also urged customers to turn on ceiling fans in a counterclockwise direction — so the heat travels downward — clean out air vents to help air circulate and practice general energy efficiency by limiting laundry machine and dishwasher use.
