‘It’s just cruel’: US households that had electricity shut off surged amid record hot summer
Utility companies cut off many Americans’ access to air conditioning and power this summer – even as dangerous heat baked communities. Photograph: Philippe Gerber/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenUtility companies cut off many Americans’ access to air conditioning and power this summer – even as dangerous heat baked communities. The protections in place aren’t working, it’s just cruel.
- ▪Utility companies cut off many Americans’ access to air conditioning and power this summer – even as dangerous heat baked communities.
- ▪Photograph: Philippe Gerber/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenUtility companies cut off many Americans’ access to air conditioning and power this summer – even as dangerous heat baked communities.
- ▪The protections in place aren’t working, it’s just cruel.
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — World |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/29/electricity-disconnected-record-heat |
| Publication time | Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:00:51 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-29T13:36:22.645Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-29T13:36:22.645Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | OjnpOp2LMtOk · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Utility companies cut off many Americans’ access to air conditioning and power this summer – even as dangerous heat baked communities. Photograph: Philippe Gerber/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenUtility companies cut off many Americans’ access to air conditioning and power this summer – even as dangerous heat baked communities. Photograph: Philippe Gerber/Getty ImagesExtreme heat‘It’s just cruel’: US households hit by surge in electricity shutoffs amid record hot summerUtility disconnections were up 28% in 10 states in July 2026 – the hottest month ever recorded in the US – compared with July 2024, data showsOliver Milman, with data visuals by Aliya UteuovaTue 29 Sep 2026 09.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 29 Sep 2026 09.32 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleA record hot summer collided…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Guardian — World.
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