By Sheldon Spackman

Contingencies In Place

City ready for increased power demand during heat wave

Jun 25, 2021 | 3:48 PM

Despite the arrival of a heat wave and the anticipated increased demand on local power consumption, officials with the City of Red Deer say they’re prepared for it.

Mandeep Parmar, Senior Distribution Engineer for the City’s Electric, Light and Power department says heat waves come as no surprise in the summer, so historic data is used to plan for the increased demand.

“And we use live data to help us do some analysis to prepare for what kind of loadings we can expect,” he explains. “Then we have contingency schemes that allow us to essentially compensate for any types of additional loads or subtraction of loads, depending on what’s going on.”

He adds, however, that help from residents to lessen that demand is always welcome, such as not using major appliances during peak periods of the day.

“Those being first thing in the morning and kind of right after work until the early part of the evening,” he points out. “Washers and dryers the later part of the evening, that always helps. Items like that. If we can switch some of the loading to a little bit off of those peaks, we usually will be in pretty good shape.”

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Parmar says heat waves tend to bring a five to 10 per cent increase in power consumption in Red Deer.

“We’re watching it constantly. We’re on it from a 24/7 operational perspective. We’re watching it by the hour and we can even watch it by the minute,” he concludes. “So we’re very well in tune with any type of peak demands or anything that would come up for this current week. So I believe that we’re in good shape.”