842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave (abcnews.com)
- Reference: 0184309406
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/07/04/2031258/842000-american-households-lost-power-today-during-a-heatwave
- Source link: https://abcnews.com/US/1-million-power-country-us-blanketed-heatwave/story?id=134467508
> That number, which will fluctuate throughout the day as crews work to restore power, is for households, meaning that the number of people impacted by these outages is likely to be much larger... Millions of Americans, however, will be contending with a heatwave that is blanketing much of the country, including in Philadelphia where the Salute to Independence Semiquincentennial Parade that had been set for Friday was canceled due to the dangerous heat wave, according to Philadelphia ABC station WPVI. Elsewhere, America's Independence Day Parade, which was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on July 4 in downtown Washington, D.C. was canceled by organizers late Friday evening due to the extreme heat in the District of Columbia... Amtrak announced it will be canceling a number of trains due to heat-related conditions.
The outages seemed to last throughout the day, with 790,103 household outages still in effect by 4:30 p.m. EST. Ironically, the power outages hit several American states that were among the country's original 13 freedom-declaring colonies, including New Jersey (143,072 outages), Pennsylvania (40,944 outages), and Virginia (27,392 outages).
CNBC adds that America's largest power grid operator said Friday "it was [3]under a federal alert to cut electricity consumption across its territory as it battled generator outages, massive overloading on its transmission lines and a [4]surge in air conditioning use from prolonged sweltering heat."
> PJM said it told utilities to reduce electricity to customers who are under contract to reduce consumption during emergencies. PJM serves 67 million people in the Mid-Atlantic, South and Washington, D.C., area. Spot wholesale electricity prices in northern Virginia, home to the largest collection of data centers in the world, have surged beyond $2,000 per megawatt hour this week. That compares to about $40 per MWh when PJM is not in distress.
[1] https://abcnews.com/US/1-million-power-country-us-blanketed-heatwave/story?id=134467508
[2] https://poweroutage.us/
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/03/power-grid-independence-day-weekend.html
[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/03/extreme-heat-us-power-grids-july-4-travel.html
living like 1776 (Score:3)
So they get to live like it's day one in America
1:45pm western Washington weather report (Score:3)
1:45pm - Mostly sunny, light breeze 72F / 22 C. Rather noisy though.
Re: (Score:2)
4:45pm eastern Maryland weather report: Mostly sunny, light breeze 100F / 38 C. Damp af.
Re: 1:45pm western Washington weather report (Score:2)
And whatâ(TM)s the percentage of homes that have A/C? Hah: thatâ(TM)s probably half the problem behind this power outage. Try Western Europe, where temperatures in the UK, France and Germany reached this or far more where homes donâ(TM)t have A/C. I was happy if I could keep my home office room here in London to 30 degrees; our bedroom didnâ(TM)t get below 31 several nights. Our homes are designed for keeping heat in. It was above 40 not so far away across the Channel.
How to make energy great again (Score:3)
1. Limit the number of data centers in the region.
2. Suspend any new data centers to be created in this region.
3. Proft.
We are in the age anyone can run their own models in house, and in doing so, memory chip prices will be forced to fall (not only because RAM makers are being sued) and hardware will be available for those outside the Datacenter sphere. With in house models, you have your own dataset, which is private, and so is your data. And those who don't use AI, aren't forced to cope with everything AI pushed down their throats, regardless of if they asked for or not.
Re: How to make energy great again (Score:2)
I hope you are trolling. I've been benchmarking local models this week and they suck. They're like that guy from Memento who forgets everything, if he was also a bonobo.
Re: How to make energy great again (Score:2)
Sounds like you haven't figured out the --context-size flag. Carry on.
Too Bad (Score:3)
Too bad they don't have more wind turbines.
But, I am curious what the typical daily number of outages is. I suspect that it is higher than most would imagine.
Sounds like the USA has an (Score:1)
AC problem.
*Take AC to mean whatever you want, it works all the same. Suck it Fox News. - Sincerely: Europe.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
The feds are telling people to cut power now? The feds that are Republicans? But I thought that was communist! Isn't that what they all bleated when Mamdani said that?
Re: (Score:3)
The feds told people that and so did the mayor of NYC. But since the “woke commie” mayor said it the feds deleted all their webpages. [1]https://www.theverge.com/polic... [theverge.com]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/policy/961449/white-house-mamdani-heatwave-deletion
Re: (Score:1)
Apparently a lot of drama about this on Twitter / X.
A typical sequence:
- Mamdami posts that NYCers should reduce power usage.
- Nikki Haley quote-tweets Mamdani with something like "this is what happens under socialism."
- A community note points out that Haley did the same thing when she was SC governor.
- 'Free-speech absolutist' Musk has the community note removed.
Re: (Score:2)
It's important to realize that the so-called far-left Democrats idealize Bolshevism while the far-right Republicans idealize Fascism, both of which are forms of Big Government Socialism.
So if the Democrats are in power and they want to increase the size and scope of government the Republicans will go along with it 80% of the time. Because they know they will eventually be back in power and have more tools of power to control.
They will balk the other 20% of the time so they still have something to run on and
Won't somebody think of the data centers! (Score:3)
I'm sure they're doing just fine. It's probably in their contract with the power company that their needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
Are the data center is okay? (Score:2)
What about corporate profits? Okay just checked those are still going through the roof. Are we still automating all the jobs away while eliminating all the social programs needed to address mass unemployment?
Who does government serve? (Score:2)
In the US, in the majority of regions, it appears to serve the desires of the wealthiest members of society regardless of the expense to the remainder.
In no sane society would datacenters be prioritized over supplying water and power to citizens, nor would standards and enforcement be so lax as to leave water and power supplies unsafe and unreliable so private operators can have better profit margins.
The reason you pay taxes is to support a community that provides common benefit. When there is no benefit -
Power infrastructure (Score:4, Funny)
And that's exactly why we need to build more power infrastructure, particularly nuclear, and hand it all over to AI companies for free.
Re: (Score:2)
> And that's exactly why we need to build more power infrastructure, particularly nuclear, and hand it all over to AI companies for free.
To be fair, the AI companies are more realistic about nuclear power than government agencies. So letting them build their own power stations is probably a good thing, so long as they are not allowed to use oil or coal.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't more realistic they just don't give a rat's ass if there's a meltdown because they don't have to live near it.
I have yet to see anyone explain to me how you prevent businessmen from coming in and skipping all the maintenance so they can pocket a shitload of short-term profits.
Every time I bring this up somebody inevitably just says but oil and gas kill more people. Okay I don't give a shit because I don't want to be alive in America without property and the people of Fukushima lost all t
Nuclear is a dead and dangerous technology (Score:4, Insightful)
It is something old nerds are weirdly obsessed with, like Ayn Rand books...
Nuclear power requires a large complex regulatory body that isn't at risk of being interfered with for profit and we burned that bridge to the ground in the last election. The bridge itself was already on fire because it was made of wood from the 1940s...
Meanwhile as long as the country has plenty of land there is absolutely no reason why you can't build out wind and solar and here's a thing that's going to blow your fucking noodle there's no reason why the government can't do that and just give everybody free electricity.
Well there is the Epstein class. They're not going to let you have electricity anymore. There is no amount of money that they are content with and no amount of power that is enough for them. They will not be happy until we are all living in dirt occasionally being blown to pieces by drones if we get too uppity or start building a civilization that could challenge their godhood.
The only place nuclear power makes sense is a handful of countries like Japan that have severe land shortages. Even then I'm not so sure it makes sense especially with their rapidly declining population. Oh and military installations. Basically heavily space constrained places. Even then again we saw what happened in Fukushima when the regulatory framework breaks down and businessmen roll in with dollar signs in their eyes.
You need to explain to me how you stop businessmen from taking over and then skipping all the maintenance. If you can't do that and absolutely nobody here can then there is no way in hell anyone is going to sign off on nuclear unless it's for a giant AI Data Center and then it's going to be poorly built and poorly regulated. Because those companies are already losing money hand over fist and they sure as shit aren't going to spend the money it takes to build a nuclear power plant safely. There is mathematically no reason to because they could just build out solar farms if it wasn't for the fact that the oil companies don't want to let them.
The fact that there are so many old nerds obsessed with nuclear when we could move our grid to wind and solar in no time if we would just stop voting Republican here in the states is why we can't have nice things...
Re: (Score:2)
Dunno man, nukes charged the battery that's bringing you this post. Nukes that just finished a major refurbishment that came in ahead of schedule and under budget.
> Nuclear power requires a large complex regulatory body that isn't at risk of being interfered with for profit and we burned that bridge to the ground in the last election.
So maybe it's just you? I think I'd be looking at your corruption problem rather than just deciding it's inevitable and writing things off because of it.
Re: (Score:2)
there's no reason why the government can't do that and just give everybody free electricity.
It's not free. Someone has to pay for it. If you're saying the government will build it and then give the electricity away for free, where do you think the government got the money to build it?
This is as bad as Europeans crowing about "free" healthcare or higher education. It's not free. They paid for it with their tax euros.
Re: (Score:2)
Windmills can go onto farms using very little land. The crops can grow and the animals can graze under them. Offshore wind takes no land,and besides gives the sealife a place to florish.