PJM Interconnection cancelled its advisory to conserve electricity during the cold snap after setting two records for wintertime demand on the same day.
The electric grid operator for more than 61 million people in 13 states and the District of Columbia, ended its special request Tuesday evening. PJM broke the record for peak winter electricity use twice on Tuesday from the previous peak of 136,675 MW in 2007. Morning electricity use peaked at 138,000 MW and in the evening at 141,312 MW. PJM credited conservation efforts with preventing the need for curtailment.
The request to reduce electricity use had applied to the entire region served by PJM. Conditions were challenging for the grid due to the extreme cold in the past two days, a number of generating plant outages as well as increased demand for electricity to meet consumers’ heating needs.
Photo:smile4camera's Flickr phostream
