PJM, the largest U.S. power grid operator, said it ordered generators to run at maximum output and bring idle power plants online immediately on Thursday evening, as it faced escalating stress from a heat dome.
PJM’s orders, detailed on its emergency procedures website, were aimed at preserving reliability as it sought to maintain power on a grid serving 67 million people across the Mid-Atlantic, South and Washington, D.C., regions and the world’s largest concentration of data centers.
Even before this week’s heat wave that sent temperatures soaring toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), PJM had been straining to overhaul a system pushed to the brink by surging energy consumption by data centers and electric vehicles.
I for one would subscribe to your district heating and cooling newsletter. I’ve long wondered about what it would look like to retrofit it into places in the US and how viable it would be.
I haven’t done the math but my gut says it would probably cost less than replacing the natural gas network (long overdue in most of the US and Canada) plus reinforcing our aging grid to support massive demand for EVs and AC units.
The answer is probably small CHP plants and soapstone thermal batteries serving smaller areas. District heating/cooling also works best with density, so downtown cores are an easy win despite the cost of trenching in new lines.
Rural areas and suburbs are likely going to stay gas, and suburbs just aren’t sustainable long term, so they’ll die a slow death this century.
As an aside, suburbs have their utilities subsidized by most municipalities (chasing more property tax revenue) so maintenance is deferred onto new builds (also helps keep new builds pricy, raising property prices, raising taxes) and eventually that utility Ponzi scheme breaks. The amount of citizens served per meter of utility with suburbs is abysmal. The only thing worse is trying to develop shared utilities for acreages…
At some point in the next decade you’ll hear of houses that are unlivable because the true utility cost will need to be paid by homeowners to overhaul their system (like a condo special assessment but you never signed up for it…) and utilities will cost more than the mortgage.