McPherson BPU’s General Manager, Tim Maier reported that despite residential and commercial electric sales being down, overall BPU electric sales were up 12.7% due to McPherson Industrial Load, which was 17.5% higher in 2016 from 2015.
Maier stated that this increase was mainly attributed to a large customer who did not have the long maintenance shutdown in 2016 that they had in 2015; however, there were a couple of significant industrial expansions as well which made notable contributions to this increase.
The fact that customers are more mindful of their ecological footprint coupled with the fact that equipment and machinery are more efficient, means most electric companies are happy if they can report that their sales remained “flat”.