St. George • As unrelenting heat continues to bake southern Utah, St. George officials are asking residents to chill when it comes to running high-energy appliances so the city can better weather the drain on the power grid.
Responding to afternoon temperatures hovering between 110 and 115 degrees, the city issued an “orange alert” this week to solicit residents’ help in not overtaxing the power system. Still, officials say the alert — the summer’s first — has been issued as more of a precaution and is no reason to panic.
“We expect there to be a lot of power drawn through the grid,” St. George Energy Services Director Bryan Dial said on the city’s Facebook page. “While we are not worried about any imminent danger, the more you use [power] the more opportunity there is for something like an [outage] to hit us.”
St. George, with a population of 105,000, has its own utility that provides power to approximately 33,000 residential and commercial customers. Dial said the utility is part of the western U.S. power grid, which covers a region already stressed from wildfires and the heat wave blanketing California and the Southwest.
Lessening the load
(Mark Eddington | The Salt Lake Tribune) Kids play in a water feature at Ivins' Unity Park on Wednesday, July 10, 2024.
As part of St George’s “Use Less, Save More” campaign, the orange alert calls on residents to take voluntary measures to lessen the grid’s power load. Recommendations call for setting air conditioners at 78 or a few degrees higher and to avoid using ovens, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, along with other high-energy appliances, between 3 and 7 p.m.
Other recommendations Dial listed include avoiding opening and closing exterior doors, keeping south- and west-facing window shades shuttered and not charging electric vehicles until late at night.
“That’s a great thing you can do to help yourself save money,” Dial added, “and for all of us to make sure we have the power we need.”
Rocky Mountain Power, which supplies electricity to many other Washington County cities, is not as concerned as St. George about outages and other heat-related problems.
“We don’t anticipate any sort of capacity or generation constraints,” Rocky Mountain Power spokesperson Tiffany Erickson said. “We are prepared for the temperature extremities during this heat wave.”
Still, Erickson added, the utility strives to educate its customers about the merits of conserving energy and saving money by setting their air conditioner at 78 and running large, energy-sapping appliances — when possible — between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The heat is on
Last Sunday, the National Weather Service issued an excessive-heat warning for lower Washington County, Zion National Park, Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Recreation Area. It isn’t scheduled to sunset until midnight Saturday.
Temperatures in the St. George area have topped 110 degrees over the past week, about 10 to 12 degrees higher than normal for July, according to Jon Wilson, meteorologist with the weather service’s Salt Lake City office.
On July 8, he noted, the afternoon high was 114 degrees, tying the record for that day. Most other days, the temperatures have flirted with record highs but fell a few degrees shy of St. George’s record of 117, which was tallied July 5, 1985, and tied July 10, 2021.
Wilson said the end of the weekend should usher in slightly cooler temperatures and a slight chance of thunderstorms as the high pressure centered over the area slides farther east.
“Still,” he added, “it will probably not bring as much relief as people would like.”
Other than a few insignificant sprinkles in May, Wilson said, St. George has not received any measurable rain since April 27.
Staying in, venturing out
Kayden Morris will take whatever he can get. The St. George resident said he and his air conditioner are really “tight” right now, but he would welcome the opportunity to venture outdoors and broaden his relational horizons.
“I’ve been indoors so much lately that I worry about developing agoraphobia,” Morris quipped, “and becoming afraid to step outside my home.”
Not everyone is willing to stay cooped up. Santa Clara resident Carole Anderson and her family have few qualms about recreating outside.
“We play pickleball at Gubler Park,” she said, “because it’s easy to get a court and the heat does not bother us.”
A deli worker at a supermarket, 20-year Ivins resident Sunni Morris said she seeks relief by taking cold showers at home or sheltering in the coolers at work.
“I also remind myself how much I hate winter,” she said. “And then I say, ‘I can do this because before I know it, winter will be here.’ "
