New York City is seeing soaring temperatures this week that could push the power grid to the brink, but Con Edison workers have been preparing for the last nine months for what they call their Super Bowl.

NY1 got a behind-the-scenes tour this week of ConEd’s control center in Manhattan.

What You Need To Know

  • Con Edison has its own weather formula to predict power usage

  • Summer is the most challenging time of year for power companies

  • Con Edison has a fleet of repair trucks on standby waiting for the next superstorm

  • Feeder cables can be repaired without stopping power to neighborhoods

Hot temperatures can push the system to its limits, but the crews have high-tech tools to help. These include specialized power-feeder cables designed to keep working even when there are partial failures, allowing the power to continue flowing, even during repairs.

ConEd has also developed its own weather formula that helps them predict the electrical load. It’s called the TV, or temperature variable formula, and it’s a measure of the forecasted temperature and humidity over a three-day period.

Other resources in the playbook include $2.3 billion in off-season system upgrades, training exercises, shifting staffing during June, July and August, having repair crews on retainer and maintaining a fleet of trucks at a designated emergency facility ready to be deployed when storms or heat hit the city.

The ConEd team has a big job ahead this summer with 96,000 miles of underground cables to monitor and maintain, and they are forecasting demand this summer to exceed last year.

Patrick McHugh, senior vice president of electric operations for Con Edison, said the summer months are when electricity demand peaks.

“We’ve been preparing for the last nine months for these summer months. We are the most reliable utility in America, and we work very hard, especially in the summer months, to make sure the power stays on and the air conditioning in available to customers,” he said.