National Fuel says heating your home will be less expensive this winter

Buffalo, NY (WBEN) National Fuel says it expects the typical residential customer to spend approximately $742 to heat their home this winter, nearly 5% less than last winter's average cost of $780.

Brian Welsch says there are two factors. "One is we're expecting usage to be a little lower this winter. Last winter was about 5% colder than average, so if we you know assume an average winter, we should see usage down. But another big driver is that the the cost of the natural gas commodity itself is down pretty significantly. If you look at last winter, on average we were buying gas at a 9x rate of four $4.60. When we're as we look to the the upcoming winter, we're projecting $3.40. So that's down about 25% year over year," explains Welsch.

He says the goal is to have a reliable supply. "We have enough natural gas to meet our customers' needs on the coldest day, and we go about layering in those those purchases over the course of the summer, leading up to the winter, and then through different contracts during the winter. So when you look at on an average day, about 40% of our natural gas supplies are are provided via our storage inventories, where we typically buy and inject those those commodities during the summer at lower rates. And then we have several other contracts that lock in or or help protect against the volatility that you might experience on in the daily markets," says Welsch.

Phil Nanula of the Buffalo Niagara Builders says there is still freedom of choice when it comes to heating your home. "Iit's still confusing on what's going on with the All Electric Building Act that is currently in litigation, going to the Supreme Court. So, currently, from a builder's perspective, we can still build a natural gas heating system home, and that's what most people prefer and that's what they want," says Nanula.

He says there are some reasons why. "Even though all along they could always have had electric if that's something they desired, but it's been proven through our organization that it is more economical to heat your home with natural gas than than electric. And depending on how you install the systems, the systems are substantially more expensive to put in with an all-electric system, and you still have to address backup power, in a power outage. So, we still and the customers still prefer a natural gas application. The electric systems just haven't proven that they can work efficiently in a cold weather climate without using heat pumps in a combination of a gas backup furnace for low temperatures, you know that occur in the winter time where the the heat pumps just can't produce enough heat," notes Nanula.