[Man50D]

As a result, it issued an appeal to those in the New York City borough's Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Borough Park, and Park Slope neighborhoods "to discontinue their use of non-essential electrical appliances, including air-conditioning,

Tell the elderly air conditioning is non essential. It doesn't make sense to ask people not to use air conditioning at the time they need it most and was invented for this very type of weather.

[kms61]

It hits 94 and NY swelters in a heat wave. In my neck of the woods, that would be slightly below average for late July.. Nobody’s dying of heatstroke around here. In fact, I rarely use my AC. Open windows and a couple of ceiling fans do just fine.

[RoadGumby]

That is the ONLY choice the utility has. There is only so much capacity (THANK YOU DEMS!!!!) and if you start tripping plants, the entire grid goes down and nothing works. Lowering voltage or ‘brown-outs’ works to keep the grid up when demand out-strips supply.