One of the worst orders FERC has ever produced
Ensuring State Emission Reduction in Clean Power Plan
As we head towards a fixed cost electricity system
How much longer before coal routinely falls below 20 percent of all generation?
The lowest number of megawatt-hours produced from coal-firing, in memory, was this April. According to Friday's Energy Department data.
Second lowest number of megawatt-hours from coal? This March. Fourth lowest? This February. (Third lowest was last November.)
Indeed, over the last few decades, in only eight months has the number of megawatt-hours from coal fallen below a hundred million.
Three of those eight months were February, March and April of this year. Another three of those months were October, November and December of last year.
April’s electric bills averaged around $86.50, $2.88 per day
U.S. households paid utilities $10.9 billion for electric service in April. That's what the Energy Department told us Friday in its latest data release.
It was the least that households have spent on electricity in a while. The last time a month's electric bills were this low? April 2012, four years earlier.
Over these four years, April 2012 to April 2016, the number of households increased by about four percent. And the overall consumer price index increased by about four and a half percent.
A chessboard, a park, two old men, memories of when power freed people
The old man, Ernest, craned and stared at a chessboard. Minutes passed. A soft breeze blew through the park. The bird above them heralded the development.
Rook move? Or the pawn? Like looking through googles underwater, the board, the best move, felt fuzzy. Decisions once felt clear, decisive, he recalls. But that was long ago.
"Move something, damn it." Patrick, perched across, was growing crankier by the day. "Hard to believe you ran a power outfit. Your electrons must have been the slowest in the industry."
Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station inaugurated electric service in 1882. Just thirty years later, in 1912, electrification of the home was underway.
The National Electric Light Association, NELA, was the predecessor to the Edison Electric Institute of our day. NELA published a book that year describing the must-have appliances for every room.
Targeting the affluent household particularly, it said:
“Let us in a friendly way compare notes, tell each other all we know, tell each other anything that has been a benefit to us and can be to others.”
The annual convention of the Edison Electric Institute was held last week in Chicago, at the Sheraton Grand Hotel. The first annual convention of what was then called the National Electric Light Association was also held in Chicago, at the Grand Pacific Hotel.
That was some time ago. The first convention was called to order at 11 a.m. on February 25, 1885. A conference in Chicago in February?
Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station had started serving customers just two and a half years earlier. The electricity industry was very new.
CPI-Electricity fell 1.3% while overall CPI rose 1%
The Consumer Price Index was published last Thursday for May 2016. Electricity? The CPI for electricity has fallen 1.3 percent over the twelve months ending May.
During the same period, the overall CPI has risen 1 percent. So electricity is significantly less expensive than it was a year ago.
The spread between the overall CPI and the CPI-Electricity is a measure of electricity becoming less expensive. The spread for May was 2.3 percent.
The spread is computed by subtracting the overall CPI, at 1 percent, less the CPI-Electricity, at minus 1.3 percent.