El Paso Electric says heat has spiked electrical usage
The Borderland has already seen 16 consecutive days of triple digits this July.
Hotter temperatures are causing residents to increase their electricity usage. Almost two weeks ago, on July 14, El Paso hit 108 degrees, which El Paso Electric says caused the city to break last year’s peak usage rate around 5 p.m.
In 2015 the electrical company’s peak load growth was at 1,794 megawatts. On July 14, the city used 1,892 megawatts, which is 98 megawatts below the electrical company’s generating capacity. The additional mega-wattage is equal to the power it would take to power 40,000 additional homes.
Although close to the generating capacity, a spokesman from the electrical company says the city wasn’t anywhere close to seeing managed outages.
El Paso Electric takes several steps before enacting managed outages. If the company exceeds its generating capacity, they would reach out to several large scale customers, which are non-residential, and ask them to decrease usage. If that failed, then the company would outsource and buy electricity from another power plant. In an extreme case, if those options were not available or a transmission line was down, then the company would start managed outages.
“We had a really hot summer,” El Paso Electric spokesman Eddie Gutierrez. “We planned ahead and asked city emergency management to prepare for managed outages. There was not interruption of service and I think that was the big story here. We were ready just in case” Gutierrez added.
For the past 10 years the city has mostly seen an increase in electrical usage. In 2006, the peak usage for that year is far below the usage in 2016. El Paso Electric has added more than 55,000 customers since 2006, but with everyone using more electricity, it is as if 200,000 homes were added to the grid.
El Paso Electric recommends keeping your home at 78 degrees to reduce usage.
