With another prolonged period of hot weather in the forecast, SaskPower says doing what you can to conserve electricity is vital.

While they are prepared to handle the increased demand, the Crown says it’s more difficult to generate power during hot weather, because fuel efficiency is lower and in some cases there is very little to no wind for their windmills.

SaskPower’s Joel Cherry said in extreme cases there are protocols they follow to save power.

“To ensure we have capacity we’ll do things like import power from our neighbors, that’s not always possible because if they’re dealing with the same issue they may have problems of their own to address,” Cherry said. “In extreme scenarios we’ll go to our large industrial customers and ask them to curtail their usage, large industries is one of the main consumers of power in the province as well,” he said.

Cherry says residential customers can help by doing a few simple things like keeping their house a degree warmer, turning off lights when not in rooms, not keeping electronics on standby mode and keeping blinds shut during the day to keep the AC from running to frequently.

“Doing that does benefit our grid, obviously demand goes up with the heat, it also becomes more difficult for us to generate power, secondly doing those things will help keep your bills lower,” Cherry said.

SaskPower already recorded a new summer power demand record this year of 3,547 megawatts on June 30, when temperatures in much of Saskatchewan climbed into the high 30s and even the low 40’s.

More energy saving tips and updates on SaskPower’s response to the current heatwave can be found on the Crown’s website.