With last winter now a memory, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Tuesday granted Intermountain Natural Gas Co. authority to interrupt customers’ use of gas to fire snow-melting equipment to clear driveways and rooftops in the midst of large wintertime accumulations of the white frosty stuff.

The utility saw the increasing use of snow-melting equipment as a growing concern during periods of peak demand since the equipment uses what the PUC called an inordinate amount of gas compared to more conventional end uses, such as space and water heating. Without saying how many of its 305,000 retail customers have the melting equipment, Intermountain late last year asked the PUC for authority to temporarily curtail the snow-melting use in times of peak demand (see Daily GPI, Dec. 15, 2009).

The PUC decided Tuesday that new residential and commercial customers that have snow-melting equipment will now receive a discounted rate in exchange for their service being interrupted at times. Existing customers with the same equipment can volunteer to receive the lower interruptible rate.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the utility system expansions needed to serve increased load for snow-melting customers “could substantially increase costs and, thus, rates for all customers,” a PUC spokesperson said.

On winter days when gas is at peak use, snow-melt use competes with other customers for the finite amounts of available natural gas that can flow through Intermountain’s distribution system, the PUC concluded, noting that this could potentially degrade service to other customers. For customers being interrupted there will be two hours’ notice prior to the snow-melting equipment being interrupted, and Intermountain will be expected to keep those interrupted informed about when service would be expected to be restored.

An on-off switch on the equipment will be located outside a customer’s site that can be easily accessible to the utility personnel, eliminating the need for utility personnel to enter customer homes or businesses. Longer term, the PUC said remote technology should be available that would negate the need for the on-off switch at each site.

“By making snow-melt service interruptible, future system expansions to serve this load can be avoided and snow-melt service can occur when system capacity is available,” the PUC said in its decision, which also urges Intermountain to “actively promote and market” the new interruptible tariff to existing snow-melt customers to achieve added conservation.

Customer comments were collected and workshops held earlier in the year by the PUC in processing the utility’s request to deal with the snow-melt load.

©Copyright 2010Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.