…the power company asks a customer to cut back on using the very thing they make money selling.
A little birdie tells me that Pepco asked a local university to cut their load by 1500KW. Assuming the notation in the message I saw wasn’t wrong, here’s an idea of how much that is: a 100 watt lightbulb consumes 0.1 kW, meaning you need to run 10 of them to get that 1kW. 1kW is not the same as 1KW, by the way, it’s 1/1000th of 1KW.
So Pepco has asked them to do the equivalent of turning off 1,500,000 light bulbs.
If you ever wondered what the cost of this kind of day was, there’s a little insight. Because they’re not going to turn off a bunch of things, they’re going to cut hardline power and use their generators. Which you can be sure are more expensive for them than using that Pepco-provided power. So when you smell more exhaust today than usual, this might be why.
This kind of thing is also why you should go get yourself a timer-operated thermostat for your home, or turn up the temp on your AC when you leave for work – reduce that load and the power company doesn’t have to brown out anyone. And of course the fact that you save money ain’t such a bad reason either.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs