The hot weather the week of July 14-20 pushed New England electricity use to its highest so far this year, with a couple of days in the top 10 all-time.
The demand did not break the all-time peak of 28,130 megawatts set on Aug. 2, 2006, but this year July 19 ranked as the No. 4 highest demand day of all time, and July 18 ranked as the No. 9.
So far in July the region used 9,674 gigawatt hours of electricity, by far the highest among any other year’s July 1 through July 21. The next highest was 2010 with right around 9,300 gigawatt hours.
The temperatures got so high last week that grid administrator ISO New England encouraged people to voluntarily conserve energy, and told power plants to delay nonessential maintenance in order to maintain maximum output.
