By Jessica Lowell
rep5@wyomingnews.com
Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle

CHEYENNE - If it seemed like people were fleeing to air conditioning wherever they could find it last week, they probably were.

The hot weather drove up the demand for cool air across Cheyenne, but the city's electricity use didn't break any records.

"We did set a peak in 2003," said Rick Kaysen, Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power's vice president for regulatory affairs.

That's when Coastal Chem still operated its plant west of Cheyenne and was running its MTBE fuel additive plant, which required a lot of electricity.

That has since gone off line, Kaysen said, freeing up a significant amount of power.

"We did see increases from Cheyenne Frontier Days," he added.

With visitors filling up most of the 2,300 hotel and motel rooms across the city and running air conditioning, he said, electric use did spike.

At the start of Frontier Days, Kaysen said, Cheyenne Light's electric load was at about 135 megawatts. At peak usage, the load reached between 148 and 150 megawatts.

Even as the demand increased, Kaysen said, no service interruptions were reported.

But that's not to say the impact ends there.

The Edison Electric Institute, an association of U.S. shareholder-owned electric companies, said demand for electricity reached a record high nationwide during the week that ended July 22: 95,259 gigawatt-hours.

That might lead to higher heating bills next winter or the winter after next.

The reason, Kaysen said, is that electric generating plants which have come on-line in the last decade or so use natural gas to make electricity.

Bryce Freeman, administrator of the Office of Consumer Advocate at the Wyoming Public Service Commission, said the price of natural gas at the Cheyenne hub has been on the rise.

Earlier this summer, it was at $5 per thousand cubic feet; it's now at $7.

Generally, Freeman said, natural gas is put in storage during the summer months for use in the winter.

If the gas is being used in the summer to make electricity to power air conditioners, it's not available later for heating.

Kaysen said heat waves are one contributing factor to increasing prices.

Another is the threat of hurricanes, which can disrupt both production and transportation of natural gas as happened in the wake of the Gulf Coast hurricanes late last summer.

"We hope we will not see a repeat of 2005," Kaysen said.

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