O&R Sets New Record for Monthly Power Demand in July

Orange and Rockland Utilities reported Thursday that it delivered more electricity to its customers in July than in any month in the company's 110-year history.

O&R officials attribute the high demand for power to this summer's consistent high temperatures and humidity, which drove air conditioning use to high levels. The  heavy demand for electricity resulted in O&R's delivering 694,606 megawatt hours (Mwh) of electricity in July - the single largest electric delivery month ever for the Pearl River-based utility.

The second highest delivery month occurred was August 2005, with 687,356 Mwh and the third in July 2006 with 683,214 Mwh. O&R says a typical residential customer uses 677 Mwh of electricity per month.

O&R has about 300,000 electric customers.

"We believe that we've successfully  met the challenges of the summer heat so far this season by taking a number of steps from pro-active system maintenance, including tree-trimming, and construction to close monitoring of the electric system on high-heat days to fast-reaction to heat-related electric system issues before they become concerns," said O&R Vice President of Operations Jim Tarpey.  "We've also enlisted our customers' cooperation in meeting those challenges. We've made sure to alert customers about the demand issues we face on hot days, inform them about the need for prudent electric use, and to remind them about the costs to their home energy budgets associated with hot days and heavy air conditioning use. Our customers, generally, have responded very positively to that information, and we believe that has made a big difference so far this summer."           

Although the monthly all-time electricity delivery record fell with this July's heat, the O&R record for a single day's electricity delivery still stands at 1,617 Mw delivered on Aug. 2, 2006. However, the fourth (July 6  1,572 Mw) and the fifth (July 7 1,558 Mw) highest single-day demand records were set this summer.      

O&R experts credit the prudent use of electricity by individual customers as one of the major contributing factors in keeping daily electric use numbers from reaching record-breaking heights.