Though we cannot celebrate Zenobe Gramme’s birthday April 4 with a big party jam-packed with friends, we will raise a glass to the great inventor of the electric motor. There had been toy-sized motors before 1873. But when Zen and his sidekick Hippolyte Fontaine – Hipp for short – accidentally reversed an electric generator that year, they happened upon a real motor to power the second industrial revolution.
This fourth episode of Podcast Utilities Fortnightly takes a deep dive into the history over the decades of coal's market share in U.S. electricity supply and how it's falling rapidly in recent years with a huge impact on the grid's carbon footprint. This January, coal plants produced just nineteen percent of our electricity, an all-time record low. How did we reach this point? That's the subject of this ten-minute program.
When have residential electric rates been expensive and not? This ten-minute episode of Podcast Utilities Fortnightly starts to answer this question by showing how the Consumer Price Index tracks historical rate trends in extraordinary detail. Part III concludes with an insightful breakdown by region of the country.
When have residential electric rates been expensive and not? This ten-minute episode of Podcast Utilities Fortnightly starts to answer this question by showing how the Consumer Price Index tracks historical rate trends in extraordinary detail. Part II looks at what happened from 1986 to 2019.
February 17 – 20
February 27 – March 4