PG&E says they could break potential record for the greatest power demand in their system's history

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- As a triple digit temperature trend continues throughout an excessive heat warning, PG&E said customer's electricity usage could be the highest they have ever seen in history.

"The highest we've experienced to this point was about 22,460 megawatts--today we think it's going to be around 22,700 megawatts," said Denny Boyles, PG&E Spokesperson.

Boyles said it won't necessarily be shattering the record, but in these excessive heat waves people use electricity more to cool their homes and businesses, especially during the first heat wave of the summer. Meaning more stress on their systems, causing their systems to fail and more power outages

Because our low temperatures have been so high even throughout the night, their systems haven't had much time to cool down.

"The more days that it stays hot the more electrical load continues to grow, and with that presents challenges to the electrical grid," said Steve Roland, Manager South Distribution Control Center.

But since PG&E went electronic in 2014, they said they are able to see outages quicker, and respond and restore power quicker-- sometimes within minutes to thousands of customers.

"What's going on now coming into the heat of the day if you will, so the outages will start rolling in. We've had outages since about 1 O clock this morning we've been responding to," said Roland. "Just the outage detection and the type of field equipment along with remote control capability we brought into this center has helped us immensely with responding to outages."

PG&E wants to remind customers if you are not going to be home, to turn your thermostat up or if you will be out of town, to turn it off.

"We do expect outages and we are ready for them if they happen," said Boyles.

PG&E said so far they have seen very few power outages related to heat, but they expect to see them start happening around 530 p.m. once people are getting home from work and cranking up their air conditioning.