DALLAS — Dallas-Fort Worth’s searing summer heat is boosting the bottom line of Oncor, the state’s largest regulated utility, by $60 million for the three-month period that ended June 30.
Dallas-based Oncor’s quarterly profit soared to $229 million — up from $169 million during the same months last year — as sweltering temperatures drove electricity demand to new highs. The quarterly results didn’t even include July, which was one of the region’s hottest months on record.
“It has been a great quarter, and I am so proud of our financial and operational performance,” said Oncor CEO Allen Nye in a statement. “The second quarter brought on record heat, beginning one of the hottest summers here in Texas in recent memory. That heat has led to several new peak demand records, with ERCOT peak demand of nearly 80,000 megawatts for the first time in July. Our vibrant and growing market will require new generation, transmission and distribution resources, and Oncor stands ready to make the investments necessary to support the needs of our market and our growing state.”
Aside from greater power use, Oncor outlined updates to its transmission and distribution rates, invested capital, customer growth and increased operation as contributing factors to the profits.
“We added 19,000 additional premises and saw a 73% increase in new transmission point-of-interconnection requests in the second quarter,” Nye said. “This represents an all-time record for new transmission interconnection requests.”
Nye also highlighted an increase in major manufacturing expected to arrive in Oncor’s service territory over the next several years.
A $5 billion silicon wafer manufacturing facility being built by GlobiTech has been approved, on top of another $30 billion semiconductor wafer manufacturing plant project being undertaken by Texas Instruments, both in Sherman. A Samsung chip manufacturing facility, estimated at $17 billion, is also coming to Taylor in central Texas.
“The Oncor service territory has become a powerhouse for advanced, highly skilled manufacturing critical to the future economic and national security of the United States,” Nye said.
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