Vacant homes on the rise, dragging down electricity sales

An increase in vacant homes contributed to a significant slowing Progress Energy Florida's electricity sales, the company said Thursday morning as it discussed first quarter results.

The number of vacant properties increased in February and March, compared with the same months last year, the utility said. The utility defines unoccupied property as a customer using less than 200 kilowatt hours of electricity a month. The average residential customer uses nearly 1,100 kilowatt hours a month.

(Check out slide 19 in the company's presentation: Download q1200820earnings20call20presentation20final1.pdf. The graph shows a steady increase in unoccupied properties since 2005, with the exception of a dip in January of this year.)

Progress Energy officials said sluggish growth and mild weather contributed to a drop in revenue. Residential electricity sales saw a steep decline of 3.6 percent. The company made up some of the drop with an increase in wholesale electricity sales.

Company officials said they expected customer growth to remain flat through the rest of 2008, and did not offer predictions for 2009. The company has averaged 2.2 percent annual customer growth over the last decade.

Progress Energy joins both Florida Power & Light and Tampa Electric in reporting that Florida's stalled real estate market hurt its bottom line.

-Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer

Comments

[Bebe]

It is hard to believe that the utility companies do not delight that we are conserving energy......ye gads...all we think about is PROFITS....we need to use the decline in usage as a gift,and do something to make it positive..
not negative.