BY LAURA GOLDBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Tristate residents aren't alone in being asked to scale back electricity use as a heat wave scorches the eastern half of the nation.
"It's happening everywhere. You're not being picked on. You're not alone," said Tom Kraynak, manager of operations and resources for the East Central Area Reliability Council (ECARC), an industry planning group in nine states, including Ohio.
As demand for electricity soared toward record levels, utilities in nearly every Midwestern and Northeastern state asked customers to conserve. Some factories in the industrial Midwest shut down or scaled back production.
Republic Engineered Steels of Massillon was ordered by Ohio Edison to shut down its furnaces, and workers were sent home at 10 a.m.; LTV Steel in Cleveland Friday ordered heat-related cutbacks for the first time in three years; and in Lorain, USS - Kobe Steel Co. idled two bar mills and two oxygen plants.
Over the last 10 or so years, Mr. Kraynak said, power use has grown faster than the companies have added capacity to produce electricity. "We don't have the extra capacity that we had in prior years so we operate a little bit tighter. Our capacity margins are smaller than what they were years ago," he said.
Earlier this month, John C. Procario, Cinergy Corp's vice president of electric system operations, said customers shouldn't be concerned about the availability of electricity this summer.
His comment came after the ECARC issued a report saying there was a 90 percent chance electricity demand would exceed supply somewhere in the Midwest over the summer.
Cinergy spokesman Steven Brash Friday cited "very unusual circumstances" in recent days. Among them: The heat wave has covered a wide area of the country and came early in the summer, and other power plants in the region are off-line.
In Ohio, three power plants are out of service, said Dick Kimmins, spokesman for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Another two-plant complex in Pennsylvania that provides power to Ohio customers is also down, he said.
Utilities buy and sell power among themselves. During a hot spell companies buy from others in an area that's not so hot, Mr. Brash said. But in this case, he said, the entire eastern half of the country is sweltering and power hasn't been as readily available to buy.
But, he said, Cinergy has been able to buy power from neighboring utilities to the south and to the west.
During a heat wave, he said, Cinergy does not sell any power it produces to customers outside its service region.
It's hot and it's not over yet
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
