Power company: Rates due to cold weather

Yahoo

27-04-2025

LAKE PLACID — A good, cold Adirondack winter can bring solid snowpack and great skiing, but it can also bring sky-high energy bills. For the most part, the higher bills this year come down to weather and good old-fashioned supply and demand.
'They were astronomically high,' said village treasurer Mindy Goddeau. 'In the seven-and-a-half years I've been here, I've never seen them that high.'
Lake Placid Municipal Electric gets its electricity primarily from the New York Power Authority, which provides hydropower from Buffalo. The power is sent to the village substation on National Grid powerlines. Normally, they get it for less than half a cent per kilowatt hour, which allows them to sell it back to customers at a relatively cheap rate.
The village gets a certain allotment of hydropower from the power authority, an amount that is determined every few years by the power authority, based on usage in the village. When the village goes over that allotment, the power authority has to buy more expensive power from other sources on the market to then sell to the village.
This past winter — especially January through March — was cold. Every day, the village has a certain amount of power to use at the cheaper hydropower rate. Every day that the village usage goes over that amount, they have to buy extra. Then, all sorts of municipalities that have their own power companies, in addition to larger companies like New York State Electric and Gas and National Grid, start buying more power all at once.
'If you've ever looked into the stock market,' Goddeau said, 'when everyone wants to buy things at the same time, the price goes up.'
Last year, in February, the village paid 4 cents per kilowatt hour for their incremental power — the more expensive power. This year, they paid 10 cents, more than double the amount. Goddeau said the village didn't really buy all that much more power overall, but the power they did have to buy was more expensive.
In addition, the village gets charged by National Grid to actually send the power. Last year, they were charged between $5 and $9 per megawatt to send the power during the winter months. This year, that charge was over $13 per megawatt. Usually, the overall, village-wide power bill for an average winter month is around $600,000, but this year it was closer to $1.3 million. All of these additional costs, including the higher-cost electricity and the cost of delivering it, are passed on to the consumer through the Purchase Power Adjustment (PPA), which shows up on energy bills.
The village can't guarantee that this won't happen again, but now the summer rates are back and the upcoming power bills should be a bit of a relief. Goddeau encourages anyone who is struggling to pay their power bill to call the village, and they can set up a payment plan.
'We're more than willing to work with people,' she said.
A few myths to bust
Goddeau also explained a few common misunderstandings about power usage, things she said she also didn't realize until she started working in this business.
'Everyone will come in and say, 'I didn't put my heat up any higher than it ever was before, my house is at 60,'' she said. 'If your house is at 60 and it's 30 degrees outside, your furnace will run less than if your house is set at 60 and it's 20 below zero outside.'
Also, turning down your heat when you leave the house doesn't necessarily save energy, either. It takes more energy to bring the house back up to temperature when you get back than it does to maintain that temperature consistently, Goddeau said.
And no, the power bills are not driven up by the Olympic Regional Development Authority, hotels and short-term vacation rentals. ORDA's usage has actually decreased significantly, Goddeau said, due to many energy-efficient upgrades made to each venue.
'They actually use less power now than they ever have,' she said. 'ORDA probably decreased the amount on the grid.'
Goddeau said many large hotels have also made energy-efficient upgrades, like heating systems and LED lights, which have also decreased power use. and while it's hard to measure the effect of STRs, it's likely that the energy saved when a house sits empty likely evens out extra usage by rental guests.
'Do they crank the heat on the weekends and probably use electricity? Yes,' she said. 'But then the cleaners come in on Monday and knock the heat back down and they're conserving it the rest of the week until the renters come back in. So it's kind of six of one, half dozen of the other.'
A regional issue
Increased power usage and costs have been seen across the area this winter. Goddeau said that Lake Placid actually tends to have lower power bills than surrounding areas, because of the allotted amount of cheaper hydropower. Keene, Wilmington and Jay have energy provided by NYSEG, which generally has much higher rates. In these areas, instead of a PPAC charge, there's a NYSERDA charge which passes along costs for things like upgrades to their customers.
'It's being felt across the board,' she said. '(In) National Grid and NYSEG areas, though, it's being felt more because they don't get hydropower. They don't get any cheap power.'
At their most recent meeting with their providers, the power authority said it was not being affected by the Canadian tariffs at this time, Goddeau said.
This winter was not the coldest the area has seen, even in recent years. However, it has been colder than the last couple of winters, said Robert Haynes, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Burlington. In particular, January and February saw lower temperatures in the Saranac Lake area compared to the last two winters and compared to the average.
Another metric that is sometimes used to measure the weather with regards to heating needs is the heating degree day, Haynes said. This measures the difference between the temperature outside and 'room temperature' at 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
'The larger the number, the more heating, in theory, is required,' he said.
This metric was higher this winter (measured between Oct. 1 and April 1) than in 2023 and 2024, but not outside the normal range. Haynes said this is not a perfect metric, but still useful to tell what the heating demand might be in a region.
'The one quality that this winter had was we just consistently remained cold. There wasn't really a big winter thaw like we've seen in several of the last winters,' he said. 'The thing that stood out to me was the consistency of it, even if it wasn't very far below the normals.'