Cold snap leads to near-record level hydro usage
Posted December 12, 2013 7:16 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – You shouldn’t only be bracing yourself for the cold weather, but also for what your next hydro bill may look like.
BC Hydro has been seeing near-record levels of usage over the past week or so.
It peaked on Monday evening when British Columbians used more than 10,000 megawatts. The following night, 850 more megawatts were consumed compared to the week before.
Simi Heer with the crown corporation isn’t surprised people are using so much power to heat their homes and says it definitely sets us apart from our friends out east.
“[They] tend to have their highest load in the summer because of the air conditioning load. We see our highest load in the winter season, so we did see substantial increases over the last seven to 10 days.”
It was freezing on Saturday, with temperatures around these parts feeling like minus-13 because of the windchill, but Heer says usage is very different when you compare weekdays and weekends.
“Generally, demand tends to be lower on Saturday and Sunday anyway, so if we would have had those temperatures on Saturday and Sunday during the weekdays [then] demand would have been higher,” she explains.
Usage is typically highest between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. BC Hydro set a record in November of 2006, when we had a snow storm.
You can find tips on how to save and take a look at how much you’re consuming when you log-on to your BC Hydro account online.
