Fayetteville, Ark. – Feb. 24, 2021 - As a historic arctic cold event gripped much of the country last week, Black Hills Energy stood ready to respond to dramatic increases in customer energy demand on our electric and natural gas infrastructure. Reliability, gas supply and operations team members continually monitored energy supply and adjusted as needed to support system integrity and meet extraordinary customer demand. Locally, technicians bundled up to physically inspect and monitor key infrastructure to be ready to respond.

“The reliability investments made in Arkansas in recent years and certain large volume customers decreasing usage played a key role in how well our infrastructure performed as our team worked tirelessly to help homes stay warm,” said Chad Kinsley, vice president of gas operations for Black Hills Energy in Arkansas.  “While we did experience an outage in Pea Ridge, our planned upgrades to the system that serves that area will accommodate capacity needs in the future. As we look to the recovery phase of this weather incident, we are focused on how the unprecedented demand in natural gas will impact customer bills and we remain committed to supporting reasonable energy costs.”

Usage is the single largest portion of energy bills and weather is the biggest factor in increased usage. When temperatures are exceptionally low and usage increases dramatically across the country, the law of supply and demand created a temporary increase in commodity prices. 

“As the extreme cold set in and widespread customer energy use increased, our teams continued to deliver the most cost-effectively priced energy available. Our team of gas supply experts and our reliable infrastructure across Black Hills Energy’s eight state footprint performed well during this historic event,” said Kinsley.

Natural gas customers may see an increase in March bills directly related to their increased consumption of energy in February.  This increase would be attributed to the additional usage as a result of extreme temperatures, and not related to the increased natural gas prices during the winter event. We will work closely with the Arkansas Public Service Commission to determine the best path forward to manage the long-term impact of increased natural gas pricing experienced during the arctic event for our customers, which will take more time.

The natural gas customers’ fuel use is passed on to them at cost. Gas supply teams continuously prepare for abnormal demand and price changes to minimize the financial impact to our customers by implementing a portfolio of gas purchase options. The recent polar event caused the largest natural gas price increases in the last twenty years.