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8.3.06 Utilities roll up records Utility operators are hoping for some mercy from the weather this month after setting records and seeing water and electrical systems strained by an unusually hot, dry July. "Tight" is how Scott Keep, senior vice president of Metropolitan Utilities District, described efforts to keep water flowing to customers in the Omaha area. And nobody is kidding himself that the threat of problems is past. "August can be a hot month," said Ron Asche, president of Nebraska Public Power District. The National Weather Service has forecast above-normal temperatures for the Midlands for all of August. Among the records set in July:
In some cases, utilities set records in about the middle of the month, just to break them again at the end of the month. The weather has been relentlessly hot and dry. For May through July, for example, the Omaha metro area received about half the rain it normally gets, according to the National Weather Service. The last time so little rain fell occurred more than 30 years ago. So far, utilities in the Midlands have been able to meet demand, but those who run electric utilities have been encouraging customers to voluntarily conserve to reduce the strain on their systems. The heat generated by large amounts of electricity coursing through power lines and transformers wears at equipment. Metropolitan Utilities District scraped through the month without asking customers to conserve. At 11 p.m. Monday, Tom Wurtz, M.U.D. president, thought he would have to issue a water alert the next morning. A timely rain about 4 a.m. Tuesday solved that problem. A key reason that most Midlands electrical utilities have not experienced some of the worries seen elsewhere in the country is that utilities here have enough of their own power plants to generate the electricity they need. They aren't as dependent as other utilities on the spot market or the nation's electrical grid for the cross-country transfer of electricity. "We can pretty much generate what we need and look to the spot market to help us at those times when we're a little short," said Mike Jones of OPPD. Perhaps the most significant question mark in the Midlands had been LES. The Lincoln utility had struggled to get coal earlier this year because of delivery problems experienced by the railroads. Earlier fears of a crippling shortage did not materialize, though. Russ Reno, spokesman for LES, said the utility was able to stockpile coal while its primary coal plant was shut down this spring for maintenance. "We're in great shape," Reno said. "As long as the railroads keep delivering, we'll do fine." |
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