How does drought affect Western power sales?
Continued drought across the West has caused lower water inflows, which, in turn, create decreased reservoir storage levels and decreased available capacity and energy. Because the drought continued across most of Western’s service area in FY 2005, net generation was down to 25.1 million MWh from 28.3 million MWh in FY 2004. When generation is not sufficient to meet firm power contract commitments, Western will purchase power from other suppliers. Lower generation resulted in power sales of close to 35.5 billion kWh in FY 2005, compared to 39.6 billion kWh FY 2004. This compares to five–year average net generation of 28.1 million MWh.
