About Public Power
In 2005 our customers used 284.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity, an increase of 5.18 percent over the previous year.
The majority of the power we sold came from the federal hydro system through BPA. However, over forty million kilowatt hours -- about 12 percent of the total -- came from the PUD's own hydro plant, a small turbine along side the fish ladder at McNary Dam.
We ended the year with 11,200 customers, up 1.9 percent from 2004.
The largest increase was in residential accounts. They grew by nearly 2.2 percent, from 9,042 to 9,244. Residential customers used the most electricity -- 119.5 million kilowatt hours, or almost 41 percent of total sales.
Other customer classes accounted for the following sales: Industrial - 23%, Large General Service - 15%, Medium General Service - 10%, Small General Service - 1%, and Irrigation - 10%.
Energy use per residential customer went down from the previous year. In 2005, the average household used 12,923 kilowatt hours of electricity. In 2004 the average residential consumption was 13,295. (These figures aren't adjusted for temperature and a severe or mild winter has a significant bearing on energy use per household.)
2005 was also our eighth year in the power sales business. We sold almost 30.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity from our landfill gas power plant and our McNary Fish way Project, bringing in $1.8 million above our long term contract sales.