IT’S July, and it’s starting to get hot. This month last year — on Friday, July 19, 2013 — New York City broke its electricity usage record. The demand strained Con Ed’s grid until it broke. Within hours, 5,200 Bronx residents were without power. And as more heat rolled in, the blackouts did too, in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston — no major metropolitan area on the East Coast was spared. Earlier that summer, California, Texas, Illinois and other states fought the same battle with heat-driven peak demand. Canada, Japan, India, Nepal and virtually the entire world face the same issue.

We have the technology to eliminate these blackouts. We’ve had it for years.

It works like this: Your utility installs a small radio device near your air-conditioner that can receive a signal from the power company when there’s a risk of a blackout. When the signal is sent, the device raises the temperature a bit, and, while you go about your business in the slightly less-air-conditioned comfort of your home, all those devices together ease the pressure on the system. In tests, most participants aren’t even aware that the device has been activated. Without noticing a thing, you’ve helped prevent a blackout.

The M.I.T. Technology Review calls it “the key technology for the electricity grid of the future.” President Obama’s administration has identified these programs as the answer to improving electrical grid reliability.

What’s the problem? It’s not the utilities. Virtually every large utility in the country has asked residents to sign up for these programs. It’s not the devices. They’ve proved themselves to be reliable over years of testing and in a host of real-world conditions. It’s not the installers. They get it right.