Valentine’s Day 2021 was one for the history books. If love was in the air, it was in frigid air that dipped into negative temperatures and set a new record low in Colorado Springs (-16° Fahrenheit was recorded on Feb. 14).
It wasn’t just the weather setting new records over the weekend. On Feb. 14, 2021, we set a new winter electric daily consumption record: 16,621 MWh, barely surpassing the former winter peak of 16,593 MWh, which occurred on Feb. 1, 2011.*
Since air conditioning became more prevalent in the Colorado Springs this century, we’ve become a summer-peaking utility, meaning we usually see our peak demand on our electric system in the summer. While we achieved a new winter daily consumption record over the weekend, it still did not surpass our overall megawatt hour daily consumption peak—17,751 MWh—which occurred on July 19, 2019.
Through the long holiday weekend of negative temperatures, our service to our customers never wavered. Whether it was our emergency operations crews responding to broken equipment, or continuing to provide reliable, uninterrupted energy services, we answered the call.
Most people never give a second thought to their utility service. They flip the light switch on and the room illuminates. They turn on the faucet to brush their teeth and cool, clean water flows from the tap. Their gas-fired furnaces, stovetops, water heaters and fireplaces all work.
But for millions of people all over the country—most notably Texas, which has received the lion’s share of the national media attention—they couldn’t help but keep their utility services top of mind. While some utility companies had thousands of customers without power, we had 93 customers without power at some point over the weekend. That is 0.04% of our total number of electric customers (238,536).
Our planners do a great job modeling for extremes and putting contingency plans in place so that when one event occurs, our entire system doesn’t go down. They stress the system for not only what we experienced this past weekend, but for even more, to be prepared in case a pump goes down, a line freezes or we experience a mechanical failure.
Last week, as leaders at Colorado Springs Utilities looked to the impending weather forecast, they put the wheels in motion to continue delivering reliable energy services to our customers.
Some of the extra measures taken to prepare us to weather the cold snap included:
Our renewable energy sources also played a role in keeping our system running without interruption. Because we purchase 60 MW of wind through a Power Purchase Agreement, we are guaranteed that energy, no matter what.
The same holds true with our solar power we get from the Grazing Yak, Palmer and Air Force Academy Solar Arrays: the energy from these arrays are supplied to us through Power Purchase Agreements. We receive more than 71 MW of energy from these three arrays. Power Purchase Agreements allow us to only pay for the energy we receive.
Although we are proud of our planning efforts and diverse portfolio that allow us to provide consistent, reliable service to the community, we still ask customers to conserve whenever possible. Using utility services efficiently not only supports our community, but utility customers across the country. We have great tips on simple steps you can take around the home to save energy—and money.
*One megawatt hour is equal to 1,000 kilowatt hours. A megawatt hour is the amount of electricity generated by a one megawatt electric generator operating or producing electricity for one hour.