Carolina customers set record for energy use

Customers of Duke Energy Carolinas - residents and businesses in central and western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina - set a record Friday for energy use as a series of below-freezing days settled into the state.

Posted 6:36 p.m. Jan 9, 2018 — Updated 5:40 p.m. Jul 13, 2018

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Customers of Duke Energy Carolinas – residents and businesses in central and western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina – set a record Friday for energy use as a series of below-freezing days settled into the state.

According to the utility, those 2.5 million customers used 21,623 megawatt-hours of power in the 7 a.m. hour on Friday, when temperatures across the Triangle hovered around 15 degrees.

Duke Energy Progress, the subsidiary of the utility that serves central and eastern NC and the Asheville region, came closest to a record on Sunday. The record for use by Duke Energy Progress customers came Feb. 20, 2015, when the minimum recorded temperature in Raleigh was 7 degrees.

"Last week was bitterly cold in the Carolinas, and our team worked around-the-clock to make sure we were prepared to meet our customers' energy needs. Extreme temperatures drive record usage since the majority of the energy we use as consumers is for heating or cooling our homes and businesses," said Nelson Peeler, senior vice president and chief transmission officer.

The weekend's frigid temperatures were not just cold -- they were record-breaking at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

"Temperatures on Sunday at 4 a.m. were bitterly cold, with RDU dropping to 4 degrees to break the old record low of 9 degrees from 2014," said WRAL meteorologist Mike Moss.

At 3 p.m. Saturday, Raleigh broke a three-decades-old cold weather record when the City of Oaks spent 158 consecutive hours at or below 32 degrees measured at RDU. By the time temperatures rose Sunday morning, Raleigh had spent 201 hours below freezing. The previous record, 157 hours, was set in 1982.

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