Want to know why electricity consumption isn't growing that much? Look no further than the Census Department stats on new single-family houses.
In 2015, 648 thousand new single-family houses were completed nationally. That's up forty-five percent from 2011. But down sixty-one percent from 2006.
Why is the housing recovery from 2011 and lingering housing recession from 2006 so important for us in utility regulation and policy?
Because new single-family houses, while often incorporating energy efficiency features, tend to be far larger than the average size of existing houses. And because a majority are built in the South, where air conditioners are run harder.
The more that new single-family houses are completed, the more consumption grows.
In 2015, 93 percent of new single-family houses nationally had air conditioning. But in the South, 100 percent had air conditioning.
54 percent of all new single-family houses were built in the South.
Nationally, in 2015, 11 percent of new single-family houses were over four thousand square feet in size, 31 percent were over three thousand, and 52 percent were over twenty-four hundred. In comparison, in 1999, just 5 percent were over four thousand, 17 percent were over three thousand, and 34 percent were over twenty-four hundred.
In the South, in 2015, 13 percent were over four thousand, 34 percent were over thousand, and 55 percent were over twenty-four hundred. These large new single-family houses in the South generally use much more electricity than the average existing home in the U.S.
Nationally, 39 percent of these new houses have electric heat. But in the South, 60 percent of them have electric heat. Another reason why these new houses use much more electricity and drive electricity consumption growth.
Number-crunching courtesy of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
