Today in Fortnightly

The latest Energy Department data shows that how much electric utility customers are paying utilities is pretty flat.  Last year, through October 2015, utilities' sales revenues were 331 billion dollars.  That was slightly down from the prior year, for the same period, when sales revenues were 333 billion.

Yes, that prior year, 2014, saw record sales revenues.  2015 looks like it will have the second highest sales revenues in history, falling short of the record 393 billion in 2014.

For the first nine months of last year, through September 2015, households used 3.4 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas.  Usage was down by 2.5% as compared to the same period of the prior year, 2014.  The difference, mainly a weaker January, and March as well.  These months in 2014 were much colder in 2014 than in 2015.  

The all-time record year for residential gas consumption was 1996,  and second place is held by 1972.  Third place is held by 2014, when consumption was only 2.9% short of 1996 and 0.8% of 1972.    

The latest Energy Department data reports that home solar roofs generated 5,111 thousand megawatt-hours during the first ten months of last year.  This represents a 42% increase over the first ten months of the prior year, a hefty gain.

Yet, home solar roofs still contribute less than half of all the megawatt-hours produced by distributed solar.  And the power made by home solar is dwarfed by that made by utility scale solar that is four times greater (by more if solar thermal is included) and by utility scale wind that is thirty times greater.  

We've all heard it said so many times, a variation of:

"By 2050 (or some other year in the future), a hundred percent (or some other high percent) of our electricity will come from renewables like wind and solar."

A key phrase is at the very end.  The words "like wind and solar" imply there's a list of renewables that'll dramatically ramp up their share of the electric generation mix, a list in which wind and solar are merely examples.