I’m one of the roughly 65 million people covered by PJM Interconnection, the largest grid operator in the US. PJM covers Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, as well as bits of a couple of neighboring states. Earlier this year, PJM forecast that electricity demand would peak at 154 gigawatts (GW) this summer. So we shouldn’t be surprised if we see electricity demand creep to even higher levels later in the summer. The power grid has to be built for moments of the absolute highest demand we can predict, like this heat wave.