The recent stretch of cold weather and snow along with single-digit overnight temperatures for several nights in a row will have some area electric customers in shock when they see their bills.
In Wake Forest homes and businesses are served by the town-operated system, Wake Forest Power, and by Wake Electric Membership Cooperative in Heritage and other subdivisions and businesses on the east side of town. There are also a few Duke Energy customers on the west side of town.
Andrew Brown Jr., the customer service manager for the customer service division of the Town of Wake Forest Finance Department, and Nicole Press, the utility billing specialist, spoke with the Gazette Tuesday.
The bills customers see for this January, including the low temperature stretch from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7 plus the snow and low temperatures Jan. 17 through Jan. 20, will be “a little higher if the house is well-insulated and the heating system is in good condition,” Brown said. But, if the heating units are old or not well-maintained and if the house is not well insulated then the individual bills will be “substantially higher.”
Press said in the past couple months some customers have been telling her they have been turning their furnace or heat pump completely off to save on power during the day, then turning them back on at night when they are at home. The heating system then has to work extra hard to get the heat back up.
She said the customer service office always advises customers to keep their heating units on all the time and turn their thermostats no higher than 68 degrees. The individual bills will vary, she said, “based on how often they are changing their thermostat.”
The finance department has a set of suggestions for customers during winter weather which can be found at https.//www.wakeforestnc.gov/customer-service-central.aspx. Just scroll down to find Energy Savings Tools.
There are three electric billing cycles each month with bills mailed on the 14th, 21st, and 30th of each month. However, Wake Forest Power pre-pay customers are billed daily s they have the benefit of seeing their usage daily, allowing them to make adjustment in their usage daily rather than waiting to see a full bill.
For all customers, the base charge is $15.95 and customers are charged the state sales tax of 7 percent. The residential consumption rate is flat at $0.1131 per kWh for everyone.
Don Bowman, the manager of engineering at WEMC, said that system with 43,500 members had a peak of “a whopping 240 megawatts” during the recent cold, way above the hottest summer days when the peak is about 195 megawatts.
He compared usage on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018, when the average temperature for the day was 17 degrees, with a randomly chosen day, Sunday, April 9, 2017, when the average temperature was 58 degrees.
Bowman said, “. . . the average consumer/member used approximately three times as much electricity on the colder day.” Bowman said consecutive cold days in a row typically drives up the load and affects the colder day slightly. “. . . a member who might have had a $90 bill in April 2017 could possible see their bill go up about three times as much in January 2018 due to high prolonged usage.
“When members see much higher electric bills after severely cold weather, they often think that their rates went up. But the member rates typically remain the same throughout the year, no matter the weather.
“The fact is, bills increase during cold snaps because members are turning up their heating systems and running them at higher temperatures for prolonged periods of time. HVAC systems and heaters usually use more energy than any other appliance or equipment in the home.
“Wake Electric’s system can be pushed to its capacity during extreme temperature days, but it rarely creates problems for us because we model and plan for peak case scenarios far in advance of a weather event. This kind of modeling is part of our yearly work planning so that we don’t get any surprises which could lead to outages.
“Though, when all 43,500 of our members on the system are cranking up the heat, it definitely puts our system to the test and any weak links become apparent.
“The system is more efficient in winter because the summer heat actually heats up our system. But the summer peaks don’t compare to what we experienced in this recent cold weather – we peaked at a whopping 240 megawatts. Even in the hottest days of summer, we usually peak at about 195 megawatts. During peak events like this, the system is pushed but we have reserve capacity to handle the load. Most of the outages our members experienced during the recent snow was from precipitation and trees, not from system strain.
“Because the Wake Forest area is growing so rapidly, we are continuously adding capacity to stay ahead of load growth and also to keep a reserve for extreme weather situations like what we experienced this time. At each substation we know the capacity and we know how much of that capacity we’re using.
“A lot of planning goes into making sure that we can handle peak events like the one we experienced this winter. We closely monitor the system as we reach capacity and we’re able to move the load from one substation to another substation to maintain balance.
“Wake Electric regularly runs modeling exercises to see what happens if, for example, member usage goes up by 10 percent, 20 percent, and so on. One of the reasons Wake Electric has a solid track record on reliability is that we have accurate and detailed information about what is going on across our system at any given time.”
One Response
Just saying well insulated or not, cold was cold tjis round.