The weather in Iowa has turned colder again, but another utility company is confirming the overall cost of heating this winter has been lower. Alliant Energy spokesman, Scott Drzycimski, says his company’s customers paid less to heat their homes in December. Drzycimski says natural gas prices were down, and coupled with warmer temperatures, customers paid 39-percent less in December compared to last year.

Drzycimski says colder weather at the start of 2007 caused the bills to go up a little. Drzycimski says customers paid between 12 and 21-percent higher bills in January and February, but he says overall customers are still going to see a drop in heating bills of about 12-percent. Drzycimski says the cost of heating can be hard to predict.

Drzycimski says they thought coming into this winter the cost would be down some, and early on it looked like it was going to be much lower than what it has ended up. He says they will get the March numbers sometime in next week or so, but overall it looks like heating costs will be down by 12 to 15 percent. Iowa’s other large utility, MidAmerican Energy, reported earlier that average heating bills would be about 50 dollars lower than last year.