Should We Follow U.K.’s Lead?
Participation rates, customers’ bills, meaningful choice
We talked with Jim Fama, retiring and on his last day at EEI, about his remarkable career.
After 20 years of consolidation, the industry looks distinctly different.
Lions and luminaries who led the changes in utilities.
Germany is clearly embracing renewables, but reduction of climate change gases seems secondary.
The US Energy Department reported last week that Germany, notwithstanding its renewables rep, is still a coal country.
What was coal's share in Germany in 2015? It was 44 percent.
What was coal's share in the US in 2015? It was 33 percent.
How about the trend for coal in Germany? In 2013, coal's share was 45 percent. In 2014, coal's share was 43 percent.
So coal actually increased its share in Germany from 2014 to 2015 by a small amount.
Last week’s Energy Dept. report: rooftop solar generated less than a half percent of residential consumption in Q1 2016.
Before the Memorial Day weekend, the Energy Department reported on the first quarter, January through March 2016.
Residential rooftop solar across the nation generated 1.6 million megawatt-hours in Q1. Residential customers consumed 346.8 million megawatt-hours of grid electricity.
So solar on the roofs of homes covered a half percent of homes' consumption of electricity.
Homes' consumption was down by 31.4 million megawatt-hours, compared with the prior year, Q1 2015. But this eight percent drop had little to do with solar trends.
The electric car and, yes, the electric toilet will save the day.
As the grid becomes cleaner, emitting decreasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other emissions with each kilowatt-hour, we can expect some rekindled interest in load growth.
The electric car is often cited as a future source of load growth. But electric toilets?
According to the web site Priceonomics:
"For anyone who has traveled through Japan, one of the greatest cultural experiences is discovering a modern Japanese toilet. These toilets, known as 'washlets,' have many amazing features - the most notable of which is they render toilet paper obsolete.
In New York City, as many as ten privately-owned utilities provided service.
The lead article in the June issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, by Tom Flaherty and Owen Ward, tells the story of the electric industry's consolidation. The impact on the number and size of companies has been extraordinary.
Let's go back in time, to well before the consolidation of the last 20 years.
Take a look at the 1925 NELA Rate Book, published 91 years ago. NELA, the National Electric Light Association, was the Edison Electric Institute of its day.