[August 10, 2011] Price spike: Hot weather means higher energy bills Tweet Aug 08, 2011 (Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- WATERLOO, Iowa -- Cooling bills for July are likely to leave customers a little hot, officials at MidAmerican Energy Co. and Alliant Energy say. The two utilities, which are Iowa's primary providers of electricity, reported record usage during a heat wave that included triple-digit daytime temperatures in the Cedar Valley in the third week of July. MidAmerican, which services 686,000 customers in Iowa, reported a record peak load of 4,700 megawatts July 19. The old record of 4,500 was set July 14, 2010. "(Last) week, we've come close to some of the figures we saw the third week of July but have not surpassed that number," said Tina Potthoff, MidAmerican spokeswoman. Waverly Light and Power also hit a new peak of 34.94 megawatts, surpassing the previous record of 31.72 set in July 2006. The difference this year is the heat has been relentless, said Scott Drzycimski, manager of customer communications for Alliant Energy. "We use Cedar Rapids numbers as a base, and based on that number there hasn't been a warmer July since 1955, and there hasn't been a month this warm since 1983, so those two things right there tell you air conditioners were used at an unusually high rate last month," he said. "That will impact customer bills." Alliant customers paid an average of $150 for electricity in July 2010. MidAmerican said its average bill was $120 in July 2010. In July 2011, Alliant recorded 399 cooling-degree days, which is a measure the utility uses to gauge how much an air-conditioner might run over a 24-hour period. "What we had a lot of were nights that did not cool down, so the air-conditioner ran 24-7," Drzycimski said. "So, cooling-degree days are a good measure of what customers actually use air-conditioning for. The cooling degree days in July were about 35 percent higher than last year." Alliant's costs actually are lower this year than last, so customers won't get hit with the 35 percent hike in their bills, Drzycimski said. "Your AC usage doesn't make up total energy usage, so it will be lower than the 35 percent," he said. The shock won't be as immediate to customers on flat payment plans, which average a year's usage and issue a month charge accordingly. About a third of MidAmerican's customers are on its "budget billing" plan, Potthoff said. Those not on flat-fee billing plans who get hit with a heavy power bill for July shouldn't wait to deal with it, Potthoff and Drzycimski said. "If you're concerned you may not be able to make your payment, call us now and start that conversation," Drzycimski said. "That's the way to have the most options on the table, rather than when you're well behind." Both utilities say they don't order disconnections during heat waves. Nevertheless, Jerry McKim, the director of the Iowa Energy Assistance Bureau, said he was fielding phone calls from Iowans who couldn't pay their power bills. "I can always tell the billing cycle of different utilities comes around because I start getting calls," he said, adding that, although the numbers for July weren't yet in, more than 79,000 disconnection notices went out in June. To see more of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.wcfcourier.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Iowa Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]