Energy needed to beat the heat knocks out power

Sweltering weather due to break

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN Brian Russell, working outside Monday, keeps a towel handy around his neck to absorb perspiration as he travels on a tractor to pick up bales of straw at the Russell Brothers farm in Morganza. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

The high temperature hit 94 degrees that day, but coupled with stifling humidity it felt as though it was as hot as 110 degrees.

Only one heat-related call came into the 911 center over the weekend and that was on Sunday evening. A man in his late 20s suffered from possible heatstroke at Chancellor’s Run Regional Park in Great Mills. He was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital by ambulance, said David Zylak, director of public safety.

Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative customers on Willows Road and South Essex Drive in Lexington Park lost power for almost three hours Sunday afternoon, as did some in the Hollywood Shores neighborhood for a shorter time.

Between 1:23 and 4:08 p.m. 1,165 Lexington Park customers were left sitting in the heat without electricity. Between 2:15 and 3:40 p.m. 135 customers were without power in Hollywood Shores.

The power system is generally working well, said Tom Dennison, spokesman for SMECO, on Monday. ‘‘These types of small glitches are expected whenever we have our first stretch of real hot weather. This type of weather causes these brief outages,” he said, when the demand for power goes up.

A switch failure and two blown fuses were the causes.

Nearby, the Lexington Park library branch kept power during its Sunday hours between 1 and 5 p.m. ‘‘We were lucky evidently. We had no issue yesterday,” said Terri Tresp, branch manager.

While the high temperature recorded at Floyd Abell’s weather station on Friday was 81, it ascended to 96 on Saturday, in keeping with hot temperatures across the region. On Sunday, it cooled down to 94, Abell joked. It was back to 95 on Monday. At 3 p.m. Tuesday, the temperature gauged 98.

On Monday the three senior centers in St. Mary’s County remained open until 7 p.m. to provide relief from the heat for those 60 and older, but no one showed up during the extended hours. The centers were open for regular hours Tuesday.

High temperatures were expected to ease on Wednesday.

On Sunday between 5 and 6 p.m., SMECO’s output reached 726 megawatts, Dennison said. On Monday between 6 and 7 p.m. demand hit 775 megawatts. The last heat wave of 2007 pushed output to 822 megawatts on Aug. 8. The temperature reached 102 degrees that day.