The latest Energy Dept. data says, as has Sly and the Family Stone, it's hot fun in the summertime.

Contiguous U.S. electricity demand last week rose with the temperatures. Peak hour demand was up six to eight percent, every weekday, relative to the comparable day of a year ago. Daily consumption was up six to ten percent, every weekday.

Thursday, August 11 was a doozy. The contiguous U.S. demanded 710 thousand megawatts at the daily peak. We used 14,246 thousand megawatt-hours that day.

Demand and consumption in the northeast drove these high numbers. 

Did you read August 14's Wall Street Journal article on Japan's audiophiles? They're installing their own utility poles to hear more clearly Queen's "I'm in Love with My Car" and other favorite tunes. (Wall Street Journal, Juro Osawa, "A Gift for Music Lovers Who Have It All: A Personal Utility Pole," August 14, 2016.)

On August 12, the Labor Department published the Producer Price Index data through July 2016. Price trends are still good for electric and natural gas consumers. And price levels are historically favorable for consumers. 

But the four monthly data series we track, from three federal departments, Labor, Commerce and Energy, are beginning to tell us something new.

But first, what did the Producer Price Index have to say? 

Spoiler alert! Here are the answers to the crossword puzzle, Power's History, in the August 2016 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly:

Across

1. Supremes ok regulation: munn

8. test for utility expense: prudence

12. with Tesla in war of currents: westinghouse 

13. Kilowatt's first name: reddy

15. smartest guys in room: enron

17. father of TVA: lilienthal

20. FERC can regulate intrastate gas: ngpa

23. nuclear accident: tmi

24. Nobel winner led to solar power: millikan

27. developed television: farnsworth

The Commerce Department published last week the gross domestic product data for the second quarter. Both electric service and natural gas service, as a percent of personal consumption expenditures, were real low. 

In the second quarter, electric service was just 1.38 percent of expenditures. This was below the second quarter of last year, when electric service was 1.45 percent. And below the second quarter of two years ago, when electric service was 1.46 percent. 

February 14, 1929. The day of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Scarface Al Capone eliminated the rival Chicago gang of Bugs Moran.

How did federal agent Eliot Ness and the Untouchables bring down Capone? It turns out the utilities industry, Sam Insull particularly, was the key.

Capone was feared by all. Chicago's mayor and the Illinois attorney general would or could do little. 

But Capone made the mistake of murdering a contractor superintendent. Chicago's Chamber of Commerce was outraged. And so the Secret Six was formed.

You know electricity works hard for you. So don't you take electricity lightly... Without electricity, you'd be in the dark. Like a cave man was, way before man's world was lit up. -Jiminy Cricket, Disney cartoon

1. Interview of former Duke CEO Jim Rogers

[Climate change legislation in 2009] could have passed in the Senate, but the White House was MIA. Because they had just passed health care. They weren't prepared for another major legislative push. There is a lot you can read into the fact that they took a pass. 

How you feelin'? The latest Energy Dept. data says, hot hot hot.

US electricity use was 94.9 million megawatt-hours in the week ending July 22, 2016. 

Continental US. Sorry Hawaii and Alaska. 

That's 4.1 percent higher than the comparable week last July. And 9.4 percent higher than three weeks earlier, the week ending June 27.

"She is come at last - at last - and all is gas and goiters." —Charles Dickens, "Nicholas Nickleby," 1839

"[The slingshot] to have some gas with the birds." —James Joyce, "Dubliners: An Encounter," 1914

"When it comes to dancing, she's a gasser." —Cab Calloway, "The Hepsters Dictionary," 1944

Look at the August 2, 1945 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly. Our issue before the Japanese surrender and the ending of World War II. 

Not a word about the dramatic developments to come in days. The bomb at Hiroshima, then at Nagasaki. Finally, the surrender. And the welcoming (and uncertainty) of peacetime.