Number of residential customers stalls for NV Energy

How long has it been since the number of residential electric customers in northern Nevada didn't rise from one year to the next?

Long enough that no one at NV Energy is exactly sure when it might have happened, although they're certain it hasn't occurred for at least a decade.

The utility reported last week that residential customer counts at the end of the first quarter were

essentially unchanged from a year earlier. That's a reflection of the stalled new home construction

business.

NV Energy executives said, too, a higher-than-usual proportion of the homes it serves are vacant, although they don't have a good method of tracing that figure.

The company said that electricity sales to residential customers in northern Nevada during the first quarter declined by 4 percent from the same period a year earlier.

NV Energy executives said an unusually warm winter rather than conservation measures by its customers appears to have been the major factor in the decline in electric usage. Heating-degree days, a

measurement of demand for energy, were down 8.1 percent compared with the first quarter of 2008.

Residential sales of natural gas also were down in the warm weather, falling by about 10 percent from year-earlier figures.

The decline in residential sales came at the same time that industrial sales of electricity fell sharply as mining companies in northeast Nevada brought their own generating plants on line.

Industrial demand for electricity in the north part of the state during the first quarter fell by 14.5 percent from a year earlier, and NV Energy executives said they believe the decline is entirely the result of new generating plants built by Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. to serve their mines.

The number of industrial companies served by the utility in northern Nevada rose by more than 4 percent over a year earlier. NV Energy executives said they don't know the reason for the higher customer count.

The decline in sales of electricity was among the factors that led to a $22.2 million first-quarter loss for NV

Energy. A year earlier, the company reported quarterly earnings of $24.1 million.

Revenues during the quarter totaled $755.3 million compared with $805 million a year earlier.

Also contributing to the quarterly loss were higher expenses associated with new generating plants in southern Nevada that NV Energy brought on line within the last year.

Those expenses aren't yet included in the utility's rates.

Bill Rogers, the company's chief financial officers, told investment analysts last week that NV Energy expects growth at a 1 percent pace this year, with an uptick to 3 percent in 2010 and 2011.