Detroit officials intentionally cut power to city hall and a convention
center Thursday to prevent the municipal power system from crashing from
high energy demand — even though temperatures had tapered to the 70s
after two days above 90. Equipment failures knocked out power to several
other government buildings and traffic lights in parts of the downtown.
“Because there was a short window of time, we had to make a decision
to take some of our customers off to prevent a blackout of the entire
city,” Detroit mayoral spokeswoman Karen Dumas said.
Too bad they didn’t have solar, which would have provided peak power
at peak load.
Detroit officials intentionally cut power to city hall and a convention center Thursday to prevent the municipal power system from crashing from high energy demand — even though temperatures had tapered to the 70s after two days above 90. Equipment failures knocked out power to several other government buildings and traffic lights in parts of the downtown.
i would expect this is something to do with the hardware over heating do to the temperatures and large demand. temperature increase resistivity of metals and then more electricity is required. Solar energy would not have sorted this issue at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Temperature_dependence
Solar generates most power when the sun is high, which is the same time as peak air conditioning load. -jsq