WASHINGTON, July 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The intense heat wave sweeping much of the United States is pushing electricity demand to new records, a situation that is stressing the power grid, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

    Little more than a month into summer, said the report, new benchmarks for daily electricity use already have been set in Atlanta, Cincinnati, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, among other cities.

    New York set a new record Tuesday of 32,075 megawatts, breaking the previous high set just last week.

    The United States as a whole likely set a new record for weekly electricity use last week, topping by as much as 4 percent the previous record demand of 90,640 gigawatt hours, set Aug. 3, 2002,according to the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association representing major utilities. A gigawatt represents one billion watts.

    The surge reflects not just the unusually widespread heat, but also a recent upward creep in industrial electricity usage, the report said.

    It said that the surging demand provides another big stress test for the nation's power grid. In August 2003, a big Northeast blackout disrupted service to 50 million people. Two years earlier, soaring prices and isolated blackouts rolled across California.

    Since those events, regulators and power companies have made changes in their operations designed to help them stay abreast of system conditions and head off problems.

    So far, the improved planning, combined with the addition of a number of new power plants, seems to be helping the system's reliability, the report said.

    The omnibus energy bill making its way through Congress also could bring changes, by putting in place enforceable electricity reliability standards that could force further improvements and spur a new generation of nuclear power plants, it added.

    Still, the report said that the run-up in demand is using up a cushion of surplus power that has moderated prices in recent years. That increases the risk of supply problems developing in a few areas. Some places, too, are poorly served by transmission lines, raising concern that a rapid boost in demand could create temporary shortages. Enditem