Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.
Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.
Electric service has never been cheaper for the American consumer than it was in November. Never. Ever.
Per the U.S. Commerce Department, specifically its Bureau of Economic Analysis. Since January 1959, monthly, the Bureau publishes an extraordinarily detailed table on Americans' personal consumer expenditures. To estimate the Gross Domestic Product.
In November, consumer expenditures totaled 12,970,394 million dollars, annualized. It's a lot, effectively 13 trillion.
Electric service was 168,218 million. That's about a sixth of a trillion.
Divide one number by the other. The result is, drum roll please, 1.30 percent.
Not 1.31 percent. That was, was, the all-time lowest percentage spent by American consumers on electric service.
But, 1.30 percent. Our new all-time low!
There are different ways to measure how much electric service costs consumers. But there's no more telling way than the share of all consumer costs spent on electricity.
Check out this simple calculation. Electricity expenditures were 0.17 trillion. Overall expenditures were 12.97 trillion.
This means a whopping 12.80 trillion was left to buy all other goods and services. The smaller the electricity share, the more Americans have, to buy everything else.
In November, consumer expenditures on telecommunication service nearly tied expenditures on electric service. Telecom is now 1.27 percent, versus 1.30 percent for electricity.
This is a historic development. Telecom expenditures are rapidly increasing. While electricity expenditures are not keeping up, either with telecom or overall consumer costs.
If you show the calculation for one more decimal place, electric service in November was 1.297 percent. Is it possible we'll see electricity's share of consumer expenditures fall to the 1.2's?
That would be incredible. Like when the sound barrier was broken.
Number-crunching courtesy of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
