Does New York have load shedding?

20 comments

1. Like, right now or in general?

   oh okay I see your edit. We do not usually have power that is unreliable, although certainly load shedding becomes necessary during times of extremely high demand. This happened on a massive scale where I live in 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

2. In general.

3. No but a few weeks ago when it got super cold for a bit, ConED (electricity) & National Grid (gas) asked us to set our thermostats a little cooler

   I did my civic duty and set to 70° instead of 75° 🙂

   ———

   That said, maybe there is some form of load shedding and I’m just not aware of it

4. Power in the US, including New York, is extremely reliable.

   If there’s any load shedding by a specific power plant, the slack is normally taken up so seamlessly that customers don’t even know it’s happening.

5. No, we do not.

6. Load shedding is only used in dire emergency situations here on the eastern interconnection, which is the power grid that covers the whole east coast from Maine to Florida and as far west as Colorado, except for Texas.

   The only intentional power cut (load shed) that I can remember was in 2003 when one of the largest blackouts in world history took out most of the east coast. It unfortunately knocked some of the largest nuclear plants in the world offline, which made the load shed orders necessary.

   Other than that the only other intentional power cuts I can remember are usually due to flooding or other natural reasons, not demand on the power grid.

7. Not yet, but they’re working really hard to make it common. Everything is backstopped mainly by gas, and the Northeast is increasingly not letting more pipelines be built. Lately, they’ve been barely keeping the power on with massive oil generation during big storms. They’ve been fighting importing hydropower from Canada. The national gas grid has begun to fail in major cold outbreaks. [This](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-generators-penalties-power-winter-storm-elliott/640242/) is from the next region south, but pretty representative.

8. We’ve been encouraged to switch to alternate backups to help go green like all the programs to provide and reward solar panels on houses. Most of the incentive has been about switching to clean and renewable energy sources and energy security as a background concern when it comes to getting the public to act. Power loss is unusual and usually a result of storms, natural disasters, and accidents. Lots of important buildings like hospitals have backup generators in case of power loss.

9. I’ve never even heard of it, so no.

10. Nope. And since I experienced it in South Asia, I am extremely grateful that we don’t have that here.

11. check out the [hourly electrical grid monitor!](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/US48/US48)

    ​

    Not NY — but the power safety shut offs are the main driving reason people around me get solar (bay area). Overall, the electrical grid is extremely stable

12. Power in the US only goes out if there’s a severe malfunction or bad weather. Even in the middle of two hurricanes this past year I didn’t lose power.

13. I know what you are talking about in SA–there is nowhere in the US that does the same thing. The closest thing occurs when there are natural disasters like blizzards that cause rolling blackouts to be initiated.

14. No. I’ve heard of SA having this, seems uncomfortable.

15. We’re a first world country. Of course not.

16. 10-15 years ago it happened a couple of times in California. It was a major news event, and the governor was recalled (allowing Arnold Schwarzenegger to become governor) over it.

17. Load shedding is not a thing in the US, our power is extremely reliable (to the extent that it’s more likely an issue with your house if there is a power cut). It’s rapidly going away in India too in urban areas especially, on a recent trip to India I didn’t have a single power cut (which was pretty shocking). South Africa has had severe corruption for years now and Tax revenue has probably fallen significantly with most wealthy South Africans moving abroad.

18. Nope

    In late 2021 I spent a month in South Africa. Amazing country in other ways, but man that loadshedding made it rough some days. Hope it gets better for y’all soon, somehow

19. Our power is more reliable here. When rolling blackouts do become necessary because of a bad storm or something, there is typically plenty of advanced notice. My area had to do rolling blackouts during the bad Texas freeze a few years ago. We had enough notice that people who wouldn’t be able to handle it because of something like a health concern had time to arrange to go elsewhere, get a generator, etc. It was only 1 afternoon and the blackouts each lasted about an hour.

20. For me in the past 5 years there have been around 5-10 outages, the longest one lasting 45 minutes [(due to extreme weather & tornadoes from the remnants of a hurricane)](https://archive.is/NqTRh). The remaining power outages have lasted less than 5 minutes. Load shedding doesn’t happen, even during the peak demand of heat wave summer air conditioning.