MASSENA — Cryptocurrency operations didn’t contribute to the increased electric costs for Massena Electric Department customers.
“The answer is no. It’s not affecting the bill,” Massena Electric Department Superintendent Andrew J. McMahon told the Massena Town Board this week.
“There is one cryptocurrency operation that Massena Electric feeds and that has no impact on the customer’s bill. They pay all incremental costs for the energy they consume,” he said. “Then, there’s a much larger operation at the old Reynolds plant, the Alcoa East plant. They are buying directly from the grid as I understand it. They haven’t been really clear with us, but their load is much higher than anything we could serve, as I understand it.”
Blame the bigger bills on the brutally cold January, Mr. McMahon said. Massena Electric Department customers receive with their bills a list of frequently asked questions, and why the costs increased was one of them.
“We get those calls all the time. If you look at the FAQ document, midway on the right there’s the history of the PPAC (purchase power adjustment charge) graph,” Mr. McMahon said.
He said the department had a high purchase power adjustment charge in 2014 when winter brought in the polar vortex and the corresponding cold, and that was a repeat this year. Below-zero temperatures were frequent in January.
“It was just brutally cold this past year. In January we had 20 days below zero as opposed to the previous two years where I think it was four or five days below zero. So, we had a lot of cold weather,” he said.
In addition, he said, the Massena Electric Department saw an increase in the price it paid for supplemental power.
“The past few years we have been paying $20 per megawatt for supplemental power. We were paying $100 a megawatt this past January. So, that cost rolls through to the consumer eventually,” Mr. McMahon said.
Between the high usage and high prices for power, the department exceeded its allocation from the New York Power Authority.
“It made for some high bills and we got a lot of calls. Jeff (Dobbins, MED treasurer) and the staff did very well with them,” Mr. McMahon said. “I think it says in the FAQ this wasn’t a localized Massena issue. This was all across the Northeastern U.S. There was really high gas prices from Minnesota to Maine. It was really cold for four or five weeks.”
