How does excessive heat cause power outages?

Answer 1

There is an increased load on the system because everyone is using their Air Conditioners. Sometimes that infamous power grid gets overloaded from too much electricity flowing, trips a circuit at a substation and cuts off power. Hold on and I'll find some sources. The first describes blackouts in general; the second talks about rolling blackouts, which are caused by an excess of power demand, which can happen during heat waves and such

Answer 2

NOT NECESSARILY DOES THE HEAT ITSELF CAUSE OUTAGES. IT IS THE OVER USAGE OF THE POWER GRID THAT CAUSES OUTAGES-.WHEN IT GET HOT HUGE ELECTRICAL CONSUMERS LIKE A/C ARE MORE IN USE AS PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO GET COOL.
AS ENERGY IS DIVERTED TO MORE CRITICAL AREAS BLACKOUT WILL OCCUR BECAUSE OF THE FINITE AMOUNT OF POWER AVAILABLE.
THIS ALSO HAS A CASCADING EFFECT-THE MORE POWER THAT IS USED THE HOTTER TRANSFORMERS AND WIRES BECOME-WHICH CAUSES MORE RESISTANCE-IN TURN CAUSING MORE POWER TO BE CONSUMED

Answer 3

First there are at least 2 or 3 very good answers already in here, that are absolutely correct. To balance that, there are a few complete idiots who not only can't type or spell, but have no clue how the world works. So far, in this topic, the good is outweighing the bad, so we'll just ignore the attention-starved few that don't have anything better to do than waste electricity by blabbering online.

Putting my soapbox away, let me say as a current electric utility employee, if you think you're local provider is greedy, go to work for them and you'll find out there is no great profit in this business. My company just recently announced the building of the first new power plant in our area in over 20 years. This is being done as a pro-active measure due to ever-increasing demand, in hopes of limiting peak-load outages. The plant construction was just announced, but the plant won't go online for probably 5 years down the road. We just went through the same heat wave as the writer from Kansas, where local temps were 106+ heat index for several days in a row. We did experience some outages, but nothing on the scale California has. We had no more than a few hundred at any given time, most of those in the same general area, which has older supply lines, etc.
2 things that have a direct effect on electricity availability are individual usage, and the ability for utility companies to increase their load capacity when they deem it necessary. In addition to an ever-increasing population, each consumer is also using more power on a daily basis. So even in a neighborhood with no new construction, the demand still increases.

How many of you now leave your home PC on most of the time due to your "always on" Internet connection?

How many TVs do you have in your house, and how many hours of the day are all, or more than one of them on?

A lot of your elected officials think you don't want new power plants built due to the environmental impact. Every power plant WILL have some effect on the environment, but remember the power plants are not allowed to operate outside the environmental limits set by the politicians. Also remember that a new power plant WILL mean a rate hike to recoup the cost of building the plant, but that typically doesn't hit your bill until the plant is operating on the grid.
Unfortunately, I think this problem will get worse before it gets better, regardless of whether the weather cooperates or not. We've elected too many politicians that are really confused about what their priorities should be, and it's starting to catch up with us. If you haven't written to any of your local elected officials, they don't know how to best represent your interests. They don't know what's important to you. Tell them.

Use your A/C when it's too hot. Use your PC when you need to. Replace your light bulbs with more efficient fluorescent bulbs. Turn off the lights and appliances you don't need right now. Don't let excessive amounts of sunlight into your house when it's hot outside, it just increases the heat load your A/C has to fight.

Use what you need, when you need it. Just pay attention to what you really need, and don't waste the power you can do without.

For those of you on the West Coast experiencing the brutal heat wave, try to keep cool and well hydrated. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Answer 4

I think where these outages have occurred are areas of the country that are not used to the type of summer heat that they are experiencing. I think that the electrical utitlity systems are designed in those areas to handle the "typical" load, but when it is 90 - 100+ degrees and everybody is trying to run their Air Conditioners all day long, it puts stress on the system and next thing you know, transformers are popping and power is gone.

Maybe the West Coast and East Coast utility companies should learn some lessons from the Central and Southern Midwest, where we typically experience 90+ degree weather everyday during the summer and just experienced a week of 100 + temperatures and had NO OUTAGES....know why? We have "Peaking" stations. These are small power plants, usually ran by a city, that can provide additional power to the grid during times of the day when demand is at its highest. As a result, there is always plenty of electricity to go around for everybody wanting to use their ACs. The Power Company calls the city and tells them that they will need to turn on their generators on at 10:00 AM or whatever, and then the city turns them on. If they aren't needed, the power company calls the city back and tells them to shut it down. It really works. The only trouble I had during that week of 100+ here in Kansas (somedays were 107 with a heat index of 115, and it was still 90 degrees at 8:00 PM in the evening!) was my AC broke down from all the work it was doing....and that had nothing to do with the electricity.

Answer 5

Excessive heat usually causes power shortages, not power outages. A power outage is normally defined as a disruption in service cause by an equipment failure or transmission line problem.

Excessive heat increases demand for power (from fans, A/C's etc) to the point that demand exceeds supply. This causes the power grid operator to restrict or cut-off power to some areas in a effort to maintain supply to most areas.

Sometimes, the increased demand and load caused by excessive heat can cause a failure of the system or lines resulting in a power outage, but usually when you hear leaders calling for conservation techniques to eliminate brown-outs, it's because of power shortages.

Answer 6

First thing I thought was everyone turning on A/C Units as well, But that was not the question. The question was "How does excessive heat cause power outages?"
In an Electrical Circuit, The hotter the circuit gets, the easier it is for electrons to flow. The easier electrons flow, the Hotter the circuit gets. Causing a Cyndrical effect. Now think about Light ??? What is Light ??? Light is a Super High Frequency Electro Magnetic Force. (witch transforms into heat)
This Huge Electro Magnetic Force is just bombarding our electrical grid. And what is our Grid but one huge Inductor. It may not seem like much from the scale that we see it. But multiply that by our entire grid system……………. That’s a lot of EMF !!!
They say that one good size solar Flare from the sun could be enough to wipe out our entire Grid.

Answer 7

An increase in the usage of air conditioners and high powered fans cause a surge in electrical usages from the power plants thereby causing rolling blackouts in communities that would otherwise use less power if the temperatures did not rise to such levels where the equipment was not needed.

Some air conditioners use high BTU's which drain the power supply and are often left on all day long and not turned off when the temperatures decrease at night or in the dawn hours. If more individuals used energy saver air conditioners this may decrease the power outages across the country, it is more efficient to even use celling fans

Answer 8

I'm sure that A/C usage alone isn't the problem. I'm sure that increased water usage for drinking, lawns, pools, etc. creates an increased demand on regional water pumping facilities which (without knowing specifics) must impact power usage. I also believe that metal expansion in high-voltage transmission cables probably also plays a part (ever notice how lines are taut in winter and drooping in summer?) this has got to contribute to electrical resistance in the lines, thus requiring more energy to keep a steady flow at a given voltage. It's also possible a bit more indoor lighting is used during the daylight hours inside homes where people are staying indoors when on a typical cooler summer day they might be enjoying some outdoor activity rather than sitting in front of the A/C inside reading or watching TV or playing games because it's too hot outside. Even people opening and closing a refrigerator door for a cool drink can cause the refrigerator's compressor to turn on more frequently in hot weather draining even more power from an already taxed system. My thought is to think outside the box and see how all the additional little things might add up and contribute in big way to more power consumption. Think about huge supermarkets with open refrigerated food aisles which I'm sure use more electricity during the summer than the winter! A simple way for each person to conserve is to change as many incandescent light bulbs in their home to compact fluorescent 'spiral' bulbs or the like -- you'd be surprised how much wattage and money you save!!

Answer 9

AlGore and George Bush get in a fight every time it gets hot. George says there is no global warming, it's just the end of the ice age. AlGore says there is and runs out an hugs a tree. This scares the squirrels which run from the trees onto the power lines which are carrying a lot of electricity due to everyone running thier ac an the squirrels get hot and fry. The tail drops down and shorts out the power lines and that blows a fuse and then that transfers all the load to the next circut and that blows a fuse too and starts a huge chain reaction. The squirrels are only partially cooked so the poor people have to turn on thier stoves to finish cooking them and that compounds the problem. You will find this explanation nowhere else on the internet because AlGore invented the internet and has control over the content and won't let this on because it disproves his Global Warming theory.

Answer 10

Wow, there are some people with ornate views of how the world works!

There are four simple facts that combine to give us power outages on hot summer days:

1) Air conditioner compressor motors use more current than anything else in your home. When they start running, they use even more. In most air conditioning applications, the compressor cycles on and off several times per hour so the average current consumed is very high.

2) High air temperatures and bright summer sun can overheat outdoor electrical infrastructure. High voltage wires sag because of both ambient temperature and resistive heating caused by high current load. Transformers can excede their safe operating temperature. The result can be very high current shorts that trip sub-station circuit breakers.

3) Electrical grids are designed to deliver some percentage over the average current load. When everybody turns on their air conditioning at the same time, the current load may excede the safety margin. That will also trip sub-station breakers.

4) The electrical grid is a very complex system of sources (generating plants) and sinks (customers) that is all interconnected. All of the generators are synchronized and individually controlled to deliver the desired voltage into the high voltage grid. There is monitoring of the current output of each generator so each supplier gets credit for the energy they supplied, but all loads are supplied power from all generators. This can make the system more reliable, because the customers in an area with a failed generator can draw power from other generators on the grid. But that assumes those other generators can supply more power. On hot summer afternoons, every generator in the multi-state grid may be running at full capacity. When one generator fails, adjacent generators may be overloaded resulting in their failure too. That makes the next set of generators fail, and so on. To avoid this, there are now circuit breakers between parts of the multi-state grids. That way a power failure can be isolated and kept from bringing down the entire grid.