Llewelyn King, publisher of Energy Daily a newsletter that covers the energy industry discusses the latest heat wave and its affects on our electrical power. The major heat wave in the east has raised some large questions about electrical power. Llewellyn King is here to sort through the questions and the answers. Welcome, Mr. King. Well, quite simply a system that's overstretched, enormous demand.
Electricity is an on-demand commodity.
It's like air traffic control. You can't store it, you can't ration it as you can traffic by traffic jams. And people need it when they need it. And it's a very sophisticated system to achieve that, with base loading and then various little bits that come up in increments. But at some point, the demand, when you have abhorrent weather can exceed the available supply, and there are tourniquets in the supply on transmission and sometimes on generation.