Just before the weekend, the Energy Department reported on January 2016.  We crunched the numbers over the weekend. 

American households paid 5.6 percent less for electricity this January.  Compared to the prior January.

Electric bills in some states shrunk substantially.  

Residential bills in the northeast dwindled.  

People living in New York, Massachusetts, Delaware, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey did really well.  Their bills dropped 20.1 percent, 16.6 percent, 15.7 percent, 14.8 percent, 13.9 percent, and 12.3 percent.  

This storm has been brewing for awhile. The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration, EIA, is supposedly anti-solar. Indeed, it's anti-renewables. 

Even though EIA is chartered to be - and has been - consistently unbiased, as the energy policy debates of the day have swirled around. Even though EIA is an agency of the Obama administration, not known to be anti-renewables. 

Since January 1, 1990, 26 years ago, much has changed and much is changing. Who drove the changes? Who have been the 10 most influential leaders that shaped our world of utilities? On Tuesday, I asked who you would name? You flooded my inbox with nominations. First, to recap, here are 20 names I put out there:  

Check out this editorial from 50 years ago, in the April 14, 1966 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly. In this criticism of the notion of a utility consumer advocate, the rhetoric reveals a gigantic gulf between American society of then and of now.

It's January 1, 1990. Electric utilities are vertically integrated. The '92 Act is two years off. RTOs and ESCOs are unheard of.

Coal dominates the generation mix. Control technologies for emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are slowly evolving. As are gas combined-cycle technologies. Gas is drilled for vertically. 

The Clean Air Act is surprisingly amended later in the year. Few are wary of climate change, aka global warming.