Kansas City Power & Light dropped its request today for its customers to conserve electricity as warmer weather reduces demand for power.
The conservation request was issued late Friday as high demand for electricity because of the cold weather was putting a strain on its power plants, which had been operating at full capacity for more than a week. The utility asked that lights be turned off that weren't needed while operating appliances such as dishwashers during the off-peak hours of 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
But the request was dropped as of noon today as temperatures began to climb, reducing demand for electricity. The warming trend is expected to last at least through next week.
"We want to thank our customers for working with us to manage through this bitterly cold weather," said John Marshall, KCP&L executive vice president of utility operations.
Marshall said the utility had set winter records in the last 10 days for electricity usage and that all 11 of KCP&L's coal-fired power plants as well as its Wolf Creek nuclear plant had been operating to meet the demand. The call for voluntary conservation was made to reduce the strain on those plants to ensure they would continue to be available.
Last week KCP&L customers were using approximately 25 percent to 30 percent more electricity than is typical for this time of year, setting a new winter peak usage record of 4,464 megawatts for all of KCP&L's service territory. The previous peak usage record was 4,230 megawatts.
KCP&L officials said a confluence of events led it to decide about 5:30 p.m. Friday that it should ask customers to conserve. Such a request is a condition to getting a priority place on the country's grid of transmission line if the utility had needed to buy power from another utility because of generating outages.
Chuck Caisley, a KCP&L spokesman, said its gas-turbine generators, which help meet peak demand in the summer, were not available since they aren't designed to deal with winter moisture.
Next winter, KCP&L should be in better shape to handle high demand. It's majority owner of a new coal-fired plant near Weston that is scheduled to be in operation next summer.
"Iatan 2 will give us a lot more headroom," Caisley said.