Rochester Gas & Electric is preparing for the extreme heat.

Crews working at the RG&E operations center on West Avenue are not working the average maintenance and daily calls.

The utility company is shifting gears and solely focusing on emergency calls. It's part of RG&E's plan to beat the heat.

"RG&E has a reliable system and outages can occur at any time for a number of reasons. Our system right now is optimal and it's working the way it's supposed to and should there be any concerns, we have measures that we would take to ensure we would get customers on as quickly as possible in a safe manner," said Veronica Dasher, RG&E spokesperson.

Spectrum News has learned RG&E has called in additional crews and has more on standby because of the hot weather — that includes more operations staff and line crews.

The hope, of course, is there will not be a power outage, but extreme heat could pose a problem. So RG&E is taking precautions, just in case. RG&E says when people use air conditioning, it uses more electricity and it puts more demand on the system.

RG&E partners with commercial and residential customers to try to reduce the demand on the system.

"There's always a chance there could be outages and we're constantly monitoring our system and we're prepared to respond to any of those outages," said Dasher.

The increase in staff and the focus on emergency-only calls will remain in effect throughout the heat wave.