Air conditioning’s summer demand drove utilities to promote electric heat

Evidence

For the nation’s electric utilities, the rapidly increasing popularity of air conditioning created a dilemma. To ensure the most profitable return on its investment in generating equipment, a utility company needed to balance the demand for power throughout the year, yet the air-conditioning load came primarily in the summer. The result was increasingly unbalanced loads. First in the south and southwest, then throughout much of the nation, a large number of electric utilities began to experience great peaks of demand in the summer. The symbolic turning point came in 1956, when the Consolidated Edison Company of New York first saw the summer load move above the peak winter demand. What could be done to restore balance to the system? To many utility executives, the answer seemed obvious: Promote electric heat. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 265

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Eco-Justice extraction/development themes and to the reader’s LGST thread on how private market incentives (peak-load profitability) precede and shape environmental consequences. — connects to: Electric heat’s cheaper installation drew builders into energy-wasteful design. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 274; Electric utilities marketed heat by betting on future atomic cheapness. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 272

Broader Connections

• Electric utilities marketed heat by betting on future atomic cheapness. #expands (0.85) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 272