One of the US electricity sector’s founding pillars was the growth of air-conditioning demand across the country in the years after the Second World War. While electrification had grown to near-universal access in the preceding decades on industrial demand and huge Depression-era government programs, the boom in power plant construction was extended and broadened by the prospect of cooling millions of homes, office buildings and shopping centers and an extended demographic shift in people moving to the sunnier states of the South was boosted.

But air conditioning isn’t without cost, especially during temperatures spikes in the summer when blackout risks loom and prices for power skyrocket in a vise of massive demand and limited total power production. Keep reading →