{"id":38586,"date":"2014-09-17T14:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T19:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=38586"},"modified":"2014-09-17T14:00:49","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T19:00:49","slug":"cooler-summer-bites-into-public-utility-revenues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/09\/17\/cooler-summer-bites-into-public-utility-revenues\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooler Summer Bites Into Public Utility Revenues"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_38593\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Austin Energy earns 40 percent of its revenue in the summer months\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/09\/AEthermostat_pyxopotamus_0.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-38593\" alt=\"Austin Energy earns 40 percent of its revenue in the summer months\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/09\/AEthermostat_pyxopotamus_0-300x217.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/09\/AEthermostat_pyxopotamus_0-300x217.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/09\/AEthermostat_pyxopotamus_0-620x448.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/09\/AEthermostat_pyxopotamus_0.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">flickr.com\/pyxopotamus<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Austin Energy earns 40 percent of its revenue in the summer months<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Aside from the month of August, this summer has been relatively cool as far as Texas summers go. That&#8217;s a welcome change of pace for those who live here, but it&#8217;s brought an\u00a0unanticipated gap in revenue for some electricity providers.<\/p>\n<p>Take Austin Energy.\u00a0At the start of the year, the city-owned utility\u00a0was expecting to bring in around $654 million in base revenue from energy used by customers.\u00a0 Since then, it has reduced that estimate by about $16.5 million.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s the impact the cooler weather has had. It\u2019s to the tune of 16 and a half million,\u201d says Carlos Cordova, a spokesperson for Austin Energy.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/168156176&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The utility makes 40 percent of its annual revenue in the four hottest months of the year that\u2019s June, July August and September. This year all those months, except August, have seen lower than average AC use and peak electric demand.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->\u201cThis is even statewide. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas had been projecting a peak demand of about 68,000 megawatts and it\u2019s just a little bit more than 66,000 and this cooler temperature was seen throughout the a state and almost throughout the entire country,\u201d Cordova says.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"related-content alignleft\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/09\/02\/as-drought-persists-cities-look-to-texas-lakes-to-answer-needs\/\">As Drought Persists, Cities Look to Texas &#8216;Lakes&#8217; to Answer Needs<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/08\/01\/as-renewable-energy-grows-nationally-wind-and-solar-pull-ahead-of-hydropower\/\">As Renewable Energy Grows, Wind and Solar Pull Ahead of Hydropower<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/07\/09\/el-paso-may-become-the-first-texas-city-to-go-coal-free\/\">El Paso May Become the First Texas City to Go Coal Free<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/07\/Powerline-2-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/austin-energy\/\">All About Austin Energy<\/a><\/p><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/102957875-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/pecan-street-project\/\">Meet the Pecan Street Research Institute, A Green Energy Incubator<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>One temperate summer isn\u2019t something that would normally be a big deal, but for some utilities it\u2019s coming after years of shrinking revenue, says Ryan Green of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fitchratings.com\/web\/en\/dynamic\/fitch-home.jsp\">Fitch Ratings<\/a>, an international credit-ranking agency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think a lot of it started with the recession where folks in a great part of the country were under stress financially and in response to that a lot of utilities wanted to soften the burden as much as possible and that meant not raising rates,\u201d say Greene.<\/p>\n<p>The long term trend is prompting Fitch to encourage some publicly owned utilities to consider rate hikes, lest their credit ratings suffer from the decline in revenue.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When revenues are down be it for weather, economics, whatever it may be. We really look to (&#8230;) public power utilities&#8217;\u00a0autonomous\u00a0rate setting authority\u00a0in order to protect financial margins,&#8221; says Greene.<\/p>\n<p>Greene says utilities that \u00a0raised rates during the recession would be better positioned to weather a few cooler summers. That&#8217;s something Austin Energy staff says it&#8217;s already done.<\/p>\n<p>In response to an email, spokespersons Cordova pointed out that\u00a0Austin Energy raised rates in 2012. Before then, he said, the utility had gone about 18 years without a rate hike. \u00a0&#8220;That was not looked at favorably by the rating agencies&#8221; wrote Cordova, &#8220;But that\u2019s behind us now.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aside from the month of August, this summer has been relatively cool as far as Texas summers go. That&#8217;s a welcome change of pace for those who live here, but it&#8217;s brought an\u00a0unanticipated gap in revenue for some electricity providers. Take Austin Energy.\u00a0At the start of the year, the city-owned utility\u00a0was expecting to bring in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38586"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38599,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38586\/revisions\/38599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}