Our resident Realtor Pat Phillips looked up the multiple listing services for the past four to five years and compared the reality with Idaho Power's Integrated Resource Plan projections:
IRP Projection/Actual building permits
2005 - 13140 / 15505
2006 - 11784 / 11730
2007 - 10701 / 5668
2008 - 10423 / 2374
2009 - 9675 / 54 (year to date)
Housing Sales per Intermountain MLS
Ada / Canyon / Payette / Malheur County
2005 - 13,209 /6,310 /475 /269
2006 - 11,101 /5,698 /439 / 293
2007 - 7,824 / 3,519 / 323 / 234
2008 - 5,871 / 2,377 / 211 / 154
2009 - ytd 709 / 262 / 27 /12
The steep drop off won't be going back up anytime soon.
Page 9 of IPCo's 2006 IRP Addendum states that "New housing growth and the associated increase in air conditioning load in southern Idaho is driving much of Idaho Power's peak load growth."
Peak load growth is one of Idaho Power's main rationales for placing its 500kV line through prime Malheur County farmland. It makes one wonder if southern Idahoans really prefer cool houses to growing food, since this is the way Idaho Power presents them to us.
The more cogent explanation is that IPCo wants the cheapest route for their regional B2H wheeling line, which might drop a few kwhs on us if we really need it.
