An interesting theory - working from home in the summer

With each house running the air conditioner. From The Daily Beast:

Brace for Blackouts in the Summer of COVID-19
Quarantine is about to take a dark new twist.
Hot weather blackouts have long plagued neighborhoods and towns from New York to California to Texas. But now experts are warning that millions of Americans who are working from home or are unemployed—cranking their air conditioners as the temperature rises on sunny days—will only strain transmission lines and transformers further.

Energy producers and distributors are quick to point out that America’s overall power usage has plummeted since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the shuttering of large commercial and industrial buildings. But those structures usually sit on the most capacious portions of an urban electrical grid, said Yury Dvorkin, assistant professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. By contrast, the power infrastructure in residential areas is typically designed to accommodate heavy use in the early mornings and evenings, with hours to cool off during the day. Consumption patterns in these districts have already changed during the crisis, with demand spiking in the daytime. Overall usage is already up by an average of 7 percent in New York City apartments, and by 15 to 20 percent in homes in California. 

As the summer heat peaks, and juice-sucking air conditioners remain on through the afternoon, the risk of failure in aged transformers and other equipment increases.

Not clear how widespread but our grid is very carefully designed and built with very little spare capacity - that costs serious money. Downtown buildings feed off very large grid ties while residential (especially sub-urban and rural homes) have pretty minimal capacity. Each house may have a 200 AMP service but heaven help the neighborhood if everyone fires up their welders at the same time.