MOSCOW, July 18 A new historical record for power consumption of 21,126 MW was recorded on Wednesday in the power system (UPS) of the South of the Russian Federation, reports System Operator UES.
This is the second record in two days — the previous one was achieved on Tuesday, July 16. And before that, the historical maximum was last recorded in January, the regulator notes. 
» The absolute historical maximum of power consumption in the IPS of the South has already been recorded twice in recent days, first on July 16, and then on July 17 at 12.00 Moscow time. It amounted to 21,126 MW,” the regulator’s Telegram channel says.
Earlier, System Operator reported that on Tuesday, a historical record of power consumption of 20,954 MW was set in the power system of southern Russia — 4 MW more than the previous maximum achieved in January. The new maximum recorded on Wednesday exceeded the January one by 176 MW.
As Deputy Energy Minister Yevgeny Grabchak noted, for the first time in the history of the energy system, the summer maximum consumption exceeded the traditional winter one. This suggests that the ECO is at the limit of its capabilities.
As the regulator notes, the actual regime-balance situation in June-July of this year in the IPS of the South is developing under conditions of a long-term elevated temperature background, and now the air temperature remains extremely high. Consumer outages in the south of the Russian Federation are associated with an increased accident rate amid extreme heat. At the time of the new record, the volume of emergency repairs and power restrictions at the power plants of the IPS South exceeded 2 GW.
“The situation with power supply in the south of the country remains tense… The main task for the System Operator against the backdrop of extremely high consumption and emergency shutdowns of generation is to prevent the development of system accidents and, as a consequence, uncontrolled mass outages of consumers,” the message quotes the first as saying Deputy Chairman of the Board of SO UES Sergei Pavlushko.