electric

A day after lifting Thursday’s systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO, Pacific Gas & Electric declared an identical OFO for Saturday that again carried penalties of $1/Dth for positive daily imbalances exceeding a 5% tolerance.

Noting that prices are still at what it called record-high levels, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Thursday that residential natural gas utility customers can expect their monthly bills to be about $26.61 more in November than they were in the same month a year ago. The utility company said that is nearly a 50% hike (49.6%).

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-inventory OFO beyond Thursday.

Pacific Gas & Electric issued a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Thursday. It carried penalties of $1/Dth for positive daily imbalances exceeding a 5% tolerance.

As part of a settlement with state regulatory staff and industrial customers, Scana subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) has agreed to defer for one year $14 million in under collected natural gas commodity purchase costs and base its winter commodity charges on recovery spread over a 24-month period, which will further increase under recoveries by $7 million during the next 12-months.

Projecting that linepack would rise above its maximum target levels Thursday through Saturday, Pacific Gas & Electric declared a systemwide Stage 2 high-inventory OFO for Thursday. Penalties of $1/Dth will apply to positive daily imbalances exceeding a 5% tolerance.

Seeking to help customers manage much higher natural gas utility bills this winter, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Tuesday filed with the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its program for qualifying low-income customers and to expand eligibility for a monthly bill-levelizing programs. The utility wants to make the expanded programs available as of Nov. 1, the start of the traditional heating season.

With wholesale natural gas prices trending only one way in the wake of the two Gulf of Mexico hurricanes, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. in San Francisco has established a monthly “Natural Gas Watch” bulletin, and its latest issue Friday cited average retail gas utility bills for its customers in October being up by $17.45/month, compared with October last year. That represents an increase of 70.8%, according to the combination utility.

In the wake of the devastation left by the levee breaks in New Orleans, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Tuesday that it would accelerate work on a 6.2-mile, $30 million natural gas transmission pipeline project in the flood-prone Sacramento Delta area east of San Francisco Bay. The PG&E utility now hopes to have the pipeline link to its major underground storage field completed next fall.