City ready for increased power demand during heat wave
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.