Summary:

• NatGas, Nuclear, Coal Power Generation Keep PJM Alive 
• First Day of Heat Dome Across Mid-Atlantic; Last Through Weekend 
• "Set Your AC To 78F": NYC Socialist Pleads With Residents As Fragile Grid Faces Blackout Risk

GridStatus' website shows the PJM Interconnection under severe peak-demand stress as heat-driven cooling loads surge across the Mid-Atlantic and eastern U.S.

PJM load is near 158 GW, net load is around 142 GW, and real-time power prices are sharply rising to about $929/MWh.

The fuel-mix chart shows the grid is heavily reliant on natural gas and coal, which together account for about 64.2% of all power, with nuclear at 20.6%. In total, gas, coal, and nuclear account for about 84.8% of the power being generated, while solar and wind remain in the high single digits.

Peak power prices across PJM are expected at around 6 p.m. local time.

The grid is operating near record load and relying heavily on gas-fired generation to prevent rolling blackouts.

Do not let climate-crisis socialists pretend otherwise: policies that reduce dispatchable fossil-fuel power leave grids extremely fragile and prone to failure when demand spikes.

Meanwhile, President Trump and the Energy Department are moving to keep fossil-fuel power generation online to preserve grid stability.

Why Democrats pushed for a power grid increasingly dependent on unreliable wind and solar, while stripping away the stable baseload capacity needed during peak demand, is no longer just an energy-policy question; it is a national security question.

"Set Your AC To 78F": NYC Socialist Pleads With Residents As Fragile Grid Faces Blackout Risk

"Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can," New York City Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on X late Wednesday.

New Yorkers are now getting a real-world lesson in what Mamdani's recent "warmth of collectivism" comments actually mean: shared sacrifice, including being told to dial back air conditioning during blistering heat as the risk of power blackouts rises.

The deeper issue here is that years of left-wing climate policies and poor grid management have left the metro area and the broader region increasingly vulnerable during peak-demand hours.

Temperatures are forecast to top 100F across NYC and large parts of the Mid-Atlantic and East Coast beginning today. The extreme weather is set to sharply drive up cooling demand, just as power grids are already under pressure from failed climate-change policies colliding with the era of data centers.

On Tuesday, the Energy Department issued emergency orders allowing PJM Interconnection power plants to bypass certain environmental limits to keep electricity flowing. Backup generators have been placed on standby on the grid serving 67 million people across 13 states.

New York City power prices climbed above $1,100 per megawatt-hour by late Wednesday afternoon. PJM expects to break its all-time peak load record of 165.5 gigawatts later today.