The blast of frigid cold into the Northeast over the last few weeks culminated in new natural gas and electric usage records in Con Edison’s New York City centralized service area.

This past Sunday, Con Edison set all-time daily and hourly records for natural gas use by residential and business customers. The company delivered 967,908 Dth of gas to its distribution customers, and a new hourly record at 11 a.m. EST by delivering 45,953 Dth through the distribution system. These broke the previous highest daily delivery of 957,879 Dth on Dec. 29, 2009, and the previous highest hourly delivery of 45,505 Dth on Jan. 17, 2000 at 9 a.m.

In addition, when including the delivery of natural gas to electric and steam generation facilities, the company established a new daily delivery record of 1.3 million Dth on Dec. 29, 2009.

Con Edison also set a new Sunday winter electric peak record at 7 p.m., delivering 7,951 MW, breaking the previous Sunday winter peak of 7,774 MW on Jan. 23, 2005 at 7 p.m.

The overall electricity peak for the utility was set last summer when the company delivered 12,083 MW at 5 p.m. EDT on Aug. 20, 2009 (see Power Market Today, Aug. 24, 2009). It was the third time a record was made over the course of only 10 days.

Con Edison maintains approximately 94,000 miles of underground electric cable and 34,000 miles of overhead cable. The utility distributes gas to 1.1 million customers in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, as well as Westchester County with 4,300 miles of gas mains and 377,000 service pipes transporting an average of about 225 Bcf a year.

©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.