Records Tumble and Sweaty New Yorkers Grumble as Heat Persists:

Con Edison, which provides power to 3.2 million residential and business customers in the five boroughs and parts of Westchester, said peak demand hit 12,987 megawatts on Tuesday, a new record for a June day and the fourth-highest day in the company’s history. The surge gave Con Edison a chance to prepare for the potentially warmer weather to follow.

Check out what happens when you take the NY Times ConEd June 2008 Electrical Demand Surge and compare that to a density map:


Can we tie the surge in electrical demand, which is certainly for air conditioning, to the lower density of Queens and outer Brooklyn? Detached housing – even multi-family dwellings – generally have a greater energy transmission due to the increased surface area which acts as a large heat sink. Row houses generally only have three sides (front, back & roof) exposed to the elements, where detached buildings have all five sides exposed to the elements.
Yet the data shows that the cooling (heating is generally by boiler) of a thousand little detached buildings by a thousand little through-the-window/wall air conditioners logically creates a surge of demand. You might think that Manhattan would be the site of an electrical surge, which the data doesn’t confirm. In Manhattan the overall demand has created a density of high rise dwellings which generally have central cooling available. Dwellings which don’t have central cooling but where each unit might only have one face facing the elements, row houses which have at the most three faces, and individual apartments which normally would have one face to the elements all transmit heat less than detached buildings.
Yet another case for density as a sustainable strategy.