Why the power stayed on during New Jersey’s July heatwave

When Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey most people’s homes didn’t flood but thousands of people did lose power for days and weeks. Since the October 2012 storm there has been more scrutiny on the state’s power suppliers to ensure that fewer people go dark during the next major hurricane.

NJ Spotlight’s Tom Johnson writes this week that the power grid got another big test from the heatwave and did fine. “It did surprisingly well. It was seven days, at least, of consecutive 90 degree plus weather and there were relatively few outages,” he said. Surprisingly, the improvements that achieved this had little to do with lessons learned from Sandy. Johnson said that the real credit goes to efforts by PJM Interconnection and several states to reduce strain on the power grid allowing for more juice during peak demand periods.