Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is urging Utahns to conserve electricity as high temperatures push power facilities to peak capacity.

On Tuesday, Huntsman said the state's power plants were on the brink of requiring a "red" alert day, which indicates a critical situation, with possible outages.

Huntsman urged people to keep thermostats at 76 degrees and directed state agencies to increase thermostats to 78 degrees. He also asked that residents turn off unnecessary lights and electrical appliances and conserve between the hours of 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. through Friday.

"Our state is experiencing an unprecedented period of population growth and increased economic activity," Huntsman said in a prepared statement. "Our power-production capabilities are being stressed like never before. Every citizen needs to be thinking about ways to better conserve energy."

Dave Eskelsen, a spokesman for Rocky Mountain Power, formerly known as Utah Power and the provider of 75 percent of the state's electricity, said the utility is meeting load requirements and has a 12 percent reserve margin.

Yet that could change quickly if something out of the ordinary occurred, like a transmission-line failure or a mechanical failure of a power plant, he said.

"The grid is under stress today," Eskelsen said Tuesday. "Generation is an issue. We're asking customers to take extra conservation measures."

Rocky Mountain Power generates 80 percent of its own power. The remaining 20 percent is purchased on the market.

"We've had some heat-related equipment failures," Eskelsen added. "We had a lot of fuses blow and need to be replaced. We've had some underground cable failures."

Today marks the Wasatch Front's eighth "yellow" alert, a warning to customers to set their thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, cook food on outdoor grills instead of in electric ovens and run clothes dryers and dishwashers after 8 p.m.

On Tuesday, some California communities faced a third straight day of no electricity, as 100-degree heat strained transmission equipment, according to the Associated Press.

In St. Louis, about 145,000 homes and businesses were still without power after two storms last week knocked out electricity to nearly 600,000 customers. In New York City, a power outage that left thousands of homes and businesses without air conditioning in Queens entered its ninth day Tuesday, and utility officials said they still could not say when service would be restored to everyone.

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