Category: Consumer news

Gov. Laura Kelly on Monday encouraged residents to conserve energy to help ensure a continued supply of natural gas and electricity, and also to keep their personal costs down.

The governor encouraged residents to turn their thermostats down to 65 to 68, to reduce water heater temperatures to 120 degrees, seal leaks around windows and doors, to close blinds and curtains to keep the warm air in, and to change filters on their furnaces.

Simple steps will make a considerable difference in conserving energy, Gov. Kelly said. The governor said at the news conference Monday afternoon that she went around turning off lights in the governor’s office and meeting room this morning, as a way of helping out.

Her remarks came as the Southwest Power Pool was urging utilities to take steps to reduce consumption. Utilities in the Kansas City area, including the Board of Public Utilities, conducted rolling power blackouts on Monday to reduce energy consumption.

Major Gen. David Weishaar, Kansas adjutant general and head of the Kansas Division of Emergency Management, said at the news conference that he requested the governor to issue an emergency declaration on Sunday afternoon. He discovered that the extended extreme cold weather affected not just the natural gas supply, but there was also the potential that electric energy as well could be affected.

The Kansas Response Plan was activated, he said. The state’s emergency center notified the National Guard of the potential need for generators. The emergency center also communicated with local governments about the possible need for warming centers, he said. They will be available to assist, he said.

Andrew French, chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission, said the state’s gas utilities don’t think this will be a gas supply problem, but the gas price spikes are very high, as much as 100 to 200 times the normal price of natural gas, which is a concern, he said.

But the electric issue is a supply issue, he said.

“Given the weather recently, which is extremely out of the ordinary, we have seen unprecedented demand for electricity, especially at this time of the year,” French said. “Add to that the fact that the weather has impacted our generation of resources, not just in Kansas but throughout the whole region, in all the states surrounding Kansas. We’re experiencing issues with wind turbines, that are not able to produce as much power as normal due to conditions like freezing fog. Some of our coal plants are not able to produce as much power as normal because of freezing coal stacks.”

On top of that, French said, some of the natural gas plants are experiencing malfunctions because of the weather. They are also competing with the gas utilities for adequate but scarce supplies of natural gas at very high prices.

“So you have this confluence of events which is limiting the availability of power throughout our region at a time when all of our customers have extreme demand for that power,” French said.

“This is not a Kansas issue,” he said. Texas has experienced blackouts as of Sunday, and this will affect every utility in several states in the region, he said.

“Customers can impact this. We are right on the edge of whether curtailments of power are needed or not. To the extent folks can conserve safely, we would certainly encourage them to cut back on natural gas and electricity from 48 to 72 hours,” French said.

Rolling blackouts were planned and coordinated from the Southwest Power Pool across all utilities across the state on Monday, he said.

They are hoping to have adequate supply, but it is possible when demand is high this evening and Tuesday morning, that there could be more rolling blackouts at that time, he said. The goal would be for them to be 30 minutes to an hour at one time and then power would come back on, he said.

Asked about the price hikes for natural gas, French said their focus now is on making sure customers continue to receive service.

The higher natural gas prices will flow through gas bills and electric bills, but the utilities have strategies to mitigate it, including hedging practices to mitigate the impact of spot prices, he said.

For the utilities that are under KCC, the KCC will look at practices, ratemaking and how they can smooth out the increases over time, he said.

In the future, there will be time for investigation and litigation to figure out what went wrong and how they can strengthen their supply and grid for the future, he said.

The governor’s news conference is online at
https://www.facebook.com/GovLauraKelly/videos/140643707905642.