The issue isn’t that the demand for electricity is so much higher than before. The issue is the supply. When you turn something on, a power plant somewhere has to generate the electricity and send it to you. Most of the time this isn’t a problem. On the hottest days with the highest demands for electricity, power plants ramp up production and send the extra power wherever its needed.
Over the last few years, that has changed. There are fewer power plants with the flexibility to scale up or down based on the demand, which means it’s much more difficult to produce enough electricity when the demand is extremely high.
This is why we need your help. Making small changes like turning off lights and bumping the thermostat a few degrees is a great place to start. Shifting your usage to earlier in the day or later at night will help, too. A few homes making changes won’t do much, but when 20,000 REMC members all work together, we can make a huge difference!