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Today in Fortnightly

A Tragedy, and New Coal Plants in China

In China, several tens of thousands of megawatts of new coal-fired capacity swamp trends in U.S.

Nov. 28, 2016: On Thanksgiving Day, the Wall Street Journal reported on the power plant construction accident in China that day. At least sixty-seven workers tragically died.

Per the WSJ article by Chun Han Wong, cooling tower scaffolding collapsed at the two-thousand megawatt expansion of the Ganneng Fengcheng coal power plant.

The article goes on to discuss, more generally, coal plant construction in China:

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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New House Sales Drive Electric Sales

The recent housing surge, in the South particularly, could drive up the growth of electricity sales.

The federal government reported last week that new single-family house sales were up 17.8 percent in October, compared with October 2015. 

Trends in sales of new single-family houses drive trends in sales of electricity. 

For every new single-family house, in the South especially, monthly electricity sales increase almost two thousand kilowatts-hours on average. 

This is a large increment. It would net out, for example, energy efficiency improvements of twenty existing houses of a hundred kilowatts-hours monthly. 

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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Someone Must Be Doing Something Right

Residential customers are paying 2.1% less for every kilowatt-hour than two years ago, and commercial customers are paying 5.5% less.

On Tuesday, the Energy Department released electricity industry data for September. The average price for residential electric service was 12.87 cents per kilowatt-hour. For commercial service, it was 10.70 cents.

Let’s see how the price of electric service has come down, first ignoring general inflation, and then appropriately including it.

Ignoring general inflation, September electric service for residential customers was 1.2 percent lower than in September 2015 and 0.6 percent lower than in September 2014. 

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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October Electric Bills Below 1.4% of Consumer Expenditures

Less than a seventieth of consumer expenditures is now needed to pay for electricity, in the second of the most affordable periods in history.

The Commerce Department has published detailed consumer expenditure data since 1959, as part of the estimation of the Gross Domestic Product. It published last week the numbers for October of this year.

For just the twenty-fifth month, out of six hundred and ninety-four months since 1959, electric bills fell below 1.4 percent of consumer expenditures.

From January 1959 through October 1999, electric bills had never fallen below 1.4 percent. November 1999 was the first time.

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Residential Solar's Share in September 2016 by State

Residential solar’s share of total generation in September was 0.3% nationally, but 2.6% in California, 0.8% in other five states, 0.1% elsewhere.

The Energy Department reported that residential solar generated 981 thousand megawatt-hours of electricity in September. Let's see what was its share of total electric generation, nationally and in key states.

We add together utility scale and distributed generation from all sectors including the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Total generation in September was 353,484 thousand megawatt-hours.

So, nationally, residential solar's share of total generation was 0.3 percent.

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Night at the Newseum

A night and day of revelations for a part-time Editor-in-Chief and night watchman.

Was I dreaming? Things were slow at Public Utilities Fortnightly. I needed to supplement my Editor-in-Chief pay. 

I applied and, for some reason, was hired as the night watchman at the Newseum. That's the popular interactive museum near the U.S. Capitol on the history of the news and press freedom. 

What happened next is hard to explain. That first night, the Newseum came alive. 

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Lights Out at DOE?

Guest Column

Luckily for former Texas Governor Rick Perry, he's not the first nominee to be Secretary of the Department of Energy to call for the abolishment of that department. That honor goes to former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham who, while a member of the Senate, actually co-sponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy!

Abraham writes about this curious episode is his very readable and useful book Lights Out: The Ten Myths About (and Real Solutions to) America's Energy Crisis, St. Martin's Press, 2010.

Byline: 
Branko Terzic
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Just Twelve Days of Rate Cases, We Wish

A favorite carol, slightly reworded for those of us in utility regulation.

On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
The filing in a new docket

 

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two cost of capital testimonies
and the filing in a new docket

 

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Celebrate, Celebrate, Dance to the Music

Electric service has never been cheaper than it was in November, per the Commerce Dept.

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.

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'Cause We are the Champions of the World

With electric service at the all-time low as a share of consumer expenditures, it’s time for regulators, utilities, advocates to claim their achievement.

We are the champions.
We are the champions.
No time for losers.
'Cause we are the champions of the world.


As we wrote yesterday, electric service has never been cheaper for the American consumer than it was in November. Never. Ever. 

Over the last 695 months! Since January 1959, when The Chipmunk Song and then Smoke Gets in Your Eyes made it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

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