No Relief In Sight for Higher Power Costs
A Letter from the Manager

   Greetings fellow Bowie-Cass members! Last fall I wrote a 2-part article about my concerns for power costs moving forward. At the time, my primary concern was for the winter but now it appears that outlook was a little shortsighted. All the indicators we were looking at have now come to fruition and some to a larger degree than any of us could have imagined. None of this should be surprising, as we’ve all watched these things play out on the world stage and then we see them in real time each time we go to the gas pump or the grocery store.

We knew natural gas was going to be a big part of the equation. When I wrote my previous article, we were looking at gas futures that were in the $5 /MMBtu range. As I write this article today, gas is trading on the Henry Hub at $7.82 / MMBtu. One year ago, today it was at $2.97. Yes, that is a 163% increase on a fuel source that makes up over 40% of our generation resources. Our next largest fuel source is coal/lignite and those plants are experiencing shortages because railroads are having labor issues. Our cheapest resource is our hydro and because of lower rainfall we’ve gotten about half the amount of energy that we did last year. All this adds up to increased wholesale power costs.  (continued)