With temperatures skyrocketing to levels absurd for the month of June, Austin is consuming electricity like an alcoholic at a free kegger. Austin Energy insists it has enough power to get us through the summer, but in the message below just sent out to the media, they nonetheless ask residents to conserve as much as possible (because on top of the environmental correctness, it will also save you money):

Austin Energy Update

Austin Energy does not expect to set another record for electric demand today. And it looks like temperatures will moderate somewhat over the rest of the week and weekend.

Austin Energy set a new all-time peak demand record Tuesday of 2,446 megawatts. That record was broken yesterday (Wednesday) when we peaked at 2,461 MW at about 5:00 p.m. This becomes the new all-time peak demand record for the Austin Energy system. The difference between the Tuesday and Wednesday records over the previous peak record set in September 2006 is about 16 MW or power sufficient for about 12,000 homes. The most interesting fact is that all-time peak records are normally set during August or September, not during June.

Austin Energy has sufficient power for this high demand period and for the summer. We have 2,480 MW of power plant generation, we have a purchased power agreement for the summer that provides 300 MW of power daily (the agreement was put in place following the closure of the Holly Power Plant last September). And we have the output of 270 MW of wind turbines located in West Texas.

We do encourage all Austin Energy customers to turn off any unused lights or appliances such as microwave ovens, televisions and VCR type equipment between the hours of 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. If all 345,000 Austin Energy residential customers turned off just two 40-watt light bulbs, the energy saved would be sufficient to power 3,000 homes. This saves the customer money and just helps provide a little more generation reserve which is always good during the peak demand part of the year.

This article appears in June 13 • 2008.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US