The Return for Customers of the Return for Shareholders
Electric generation prices in August were at their lowest point since August 2004, twelve years ago
Electricity’s Producer Price Index up just 3.7% from August 2004, while overall Consumer Price Index up 9.9%
Late last week, the feds dumped a wealth of August electric price data on our desk. This week, we’re filling you in, on what it all means for utility policy and regulation.
There’s too much to fit in a single column. See yesterday’s column for Consumer Price Index trends in residential electric rates, by region. Here today is another taste. To get the full story, catch all the columns this week.
Late last week, the feds dumped a wealth of August electric price data on our desk. This week, we’ll fill you in, on what it all means for utility policy and regulation.
But first, thanks! Two months ago, on July 14, 2016, this column announced the new biz model for Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Spoiler alert! Here are the answers to the crossword puzzle, Rural Coops, in the September 2016 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly:
Across
2. association of coops: nreca
5. original name of coops agency: rea
6. coop finance corp.: cfc
8. largest coop, in Texas: pedernales
12. main fuel of coop plants: coal
13. U.S. senator pushed to start coops: norris
14. fourth largest coop, in Florida: withlacoochee
16. in very many coop names: member
20. small Midwest state with eighty coops: iowa
Today we again mine the mother lode, the Labor Department’s Consumer Expenditure Survey. In extraordinary detail, it reports what households spent last year for everything.
Let’s look at the electric bills of low-income households in the Northeast, Midwest and West. Low-income includes, for this look, households with income before taxes averaging under $30,000 per year in 2014 – 2015.
We’ll leave aside electric bills in the South. Electric bills there are generally higher where air-conditioners are run harder.
Electric bills are around four percent of expenditures for low-income households versus around two percent for high-income households
Today we continue to mine the mother lode, the Labor Department’s Consumer Expenditure Survey. In extraordinary detail, it reports what households spent last year for everything.
Let’s look at electric bills by income. There are fascinating implications for utility regulation and policy.
As we wrote last week, a household’s electric service averaged $4.00 daily. Or 2.6 percent of all consumer expenditures.
At around $3.50 daily, electric bills are less than telephone bills on average
Today we continue to mine the mother lode, the 2015 Consumer Expenditure Survey released last week by the Labor Department, on what consumers spend on everything, including electric and natural gas service.
As we wrote yesterday, at four bucks a day, electric service averages 2.61 percent of Americans’ consumer expenditures. It’s a considerably lower percentage if expenditures made on behalf of consumers are counted, by government, insurance, etc.
The regional differences are dramatic.
Average residential electric bill fell to four dollars daily in 2015
Four bucks a day. On the nose. That's what the average American household pays for their home's electric utility service.
Last week, the Labor Department released the results of the Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2015. It's the mother lode, on what consumers spend for everything, including electric and natural gas service.
The average daily electric bill is down seven cents from 2014. That's a 1.62 percent drop in electricity's cost to consumers. It would be a larger drop if you took inflation into account.