By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — With temperatures soaring into the 90s again Tuesday, Con Ed asked Upper West Siders to sweat out the heat for part of the day.
To save power, the utility asked 78,000 customers to turn off "non-essential" appliances, including air conditioners. The affected area was between 71st Street and 111th Street and Central Park West and the Hudson River.
"Obviously we apologize for any inconvenience to folks and we’re working on these problems to fix them as expeditiously as we can," said Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee.
ConEd called customers just after 8:30 p.m. Monday to request they turn off their electricity, and then called back about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday afternoon to say electricity could be turned back on.
No outages were reported in Manhattan, though about 1,200 Brooklyn customers lost power, McGee said.
Con Ed detected problems on the Upper West Side with over-stressed "feeders" — which work like circuit breakers in your house — during record-setting power usage Monday as sweaty customers cranked up air conditioners.
Tuesday's high temperature in Manhattan was expected to reach 92 degrees.
Monday was one of 34 days in Con Ed's history when power usage topped 12,000 megawatts, McGee said.
The city's usage maxed out on August 2, 2006, when New Yorkers gobbled 13,141 megawatts. The high back then was 97 degrees, according to news reports.
The city opened cooling centers Monday, but didn't plan to open any Tuesday, according to the Office of Emergency Services website.
