By the weekend, warmer temperatures eased concerns among the Pacific Northwest utilities hit by record demand and thousands of outages in the wake of a freezing Arctic storm that drove through the region at the beginning of the week. In the eastern portion of the state of Washington, a spokesperson for Avista Utilities said Friday the weather was “beautiful,” and the area had avoided the potential fall-out from freezing rain that can ice up power lines causing them to sag or come down from the extra weight as happened in the western portion of the state and Oregon.

Other areas were still digging out, winnowing down the number of outages. A Portland General Electric (PGE) spokespereson in Oregon said the utility had “turned the corner” Friday morning, going from “two-steps-forward/two-steps-back” earlier in the week to “two-steps-forward/one-step-back” at present. With 15,000 customers still without power, the spokesperson said it would take the whole weekend to complete the restoration process.

Portland-based Northwest Natural Gas reported “unprecedented” levels of demand, but few outages. “In part, the company was able to meet the record demand because of the recent completion of a 12-mile portion of the South Mist Pipeline Extension, which reinforced supply to the west and south of the Portland metropolitan area,” said a Northwest Gas utility spokesperson.

Monday, Northwest set its all-time record of 8.8 million therms, and its second highest level ever the next day (8.2 million therms), the spokesperson said. The previous record was 7.4 million therms Dec. 20, 1998.

Throughout portions of the northern areas in West — from Washington state to Colorado — record natural gas and electricity demand was experienced. Xcel Energy’s Colorado customers used a record 1.94 Bcf of natural gas during a 24-hour period, a company spokesperson said on Friday, exceeding the previous record of 1.9 Bcf. Besides the cold, a contributing factor to the record is the fact that the utility has added 150,000 customers since 1998 when the previous record was set.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) in western Washington set a natural gas sendout record at the outset of the cold snap and then a near-record for electricity the next day. As of Friday, almost all of the 125,000 customers who lost power had been restored, a company spokesperson said, noting the remaining 2,500 would have power by the end of the day Friday.

To the east in Montana, NorthWestern Energy faced electricity demand (1,547 MW) Tuesday, exceeding totals reached the past two summers in 100-degree heat. Temperatures in some places bottomed out at minus-31 degrees, a utility spokesperson told local news media. The combination utility also reported sending out about 275 MMcf/d in the midst of the current cold snap.

Earlier in the week PGE and PSE were still coping with outages and near-record demands. Thursday morning PGE still had 40,000 customers needing restores. In western state of Washington, PSE coped with the aftermath of Sunday and Monday’s record snowfall and low temperatures, and like its counterpart in Portland, Puget it used all of its available work force all week long (24/7) to deal with the situation.

Snow followed by the freezing rain Wednesday caused lines to come down, knocking out power to 125,000 Puget electric customers, and 25,000 remained without power Thursday morning. A utility spokesperson in Bellevue, WA, north of Seattle said the utility expected to have most of those customers restored by the end of the day.

Meanwhile, in the Northeast region of the country, widespread sub-zero temperatures also drove up demand and hiked some natural gas wholesale prices to as high as $17.50/MMBtu at Transco Zone 6 New York.

©Copyright 2004 Intelligence Press Inc. Allrights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republishedor redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without priorwritten consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.