PECO Energy Joins With Planalytics To Lower Gas Acquisition Costs

PECO Energy, a unit of Exelon Corporation, and Planalytics Inc. have signed an agreement to access Weathernomics Gas Buyer, a financial risk management tool for buyers and sellers of natural gas.

The web-delivered tool, designed by Planalytics, proposes specific buying actions that reduce risk and utilize weather-driven changes in gas prices for up to one year into the future. Planalytics hopes to anticipate further natural gas market volatility and contain gas acquisition costs.

Weathernomics Gas Buyer beat the average natural gas market month-end price by 21.8% over the past year. For the past year, the average month-end cost to buy natural gas was $4.53 per MMBtu. Over the same period, the average cost using Weathernomics Gas Buyer was $3.54 per MMBtu, or $0.99 lower. The month-end settlement price is the average of the closing price on the last three days of each month.

Weathernomics Gas Buyer does not forecast natural gas prices in a traditional sense. Instead, it predicts the turning points and direction of gas price changes, and uses that information to determine the most cost-effective method to purchase gas.

Weathernomics Gas Buyer utilizes long-range weather information, American Gas Association weekly storage data, inventory change forecasts, real-time NYMEX futures contract pricing and proprietary Weathernomics technology to produce daily buy-sell suggestions. The program is not based on mathematical probabilities of weather, but rather on long-range weather forecasts from Planalytics, Inc.