Conserving Energy Helps Keep Your Home Cool
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The Pittsburgh area is embarking on a heat wave.
There are ways to keep your home cool that go beyond cranking up the air conditioning.
Duquesne Light says you should avoid using your oven, stove, dishwasher, washer and dryer until after 7 p.m.
"Those appliances create a lot of heat in the house because they're all electric motors," Joe Vallarian, a spokesman for Duquesne Light, said. "So they're running, some of them using hot water – it's creating heat in the house, so your air conditioner's going to go, 'Well, wait a minute.'"
He adds that when everyone comes home at the same time and fires up those appliances and turns down the thermostat, transformers pay the price.
"When you have six or seven houses that are on a transformer and they're all doing that at one time, it does create a strain," Vallarian explained.
The result is the potential for a power outage.
"Two or three days of this type of heat is when we start to see the transformers – they become overloaded," Vallarian said.
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