Eight-five years ago, on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, died.

The Wizard’s passing was big news nationally and internationally. Though Al Capone was convicted that day for tax evasion. And though a hundred thousand Nazi storm troopers rioted in Braunschweig, Germany. 

President Herbert Hoover urged all Americans to turn out their lights for one-minute at 10 p.m., the night of Edison’s funeral. Similar observances took place throughout the world. 

Using the cool state map on the NARUC web site, I calculated that there are 8,283 state commission staff.

Only the screen for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission didn’t show the number of staff.  But I counted using that Commission’s staff directory. 

There’s an average of 162 staff at each state commission.  

Was reading, for fun, “The Memoirs of Samuel Insull.” 

Insull wrote the autobiography in the summer of 1934.

As the Depression deepened in 1932, Insull’s extensive utility holding company had collapsed. The press, public and politicians found a scapegoat. After several attempts to extradite him from Europe, U.S. authorities took him off a ship to stand trial in three high-profile cases.

Insull, the man who went from Thomas Edison’s secretary to the inventor of utility regulation, was acquitted on all charges. 

Reddy Kilowatt, our industry’s adorable mascot for ninety years, appears in a different spot in every issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly.

Many of you know Reddy was developed and promoted by Ash Collins, Sr.  Collins had been a manager at Alabama Power.  He felt our industry needed to engage the public more positively.

Alabama Power copyrighted Collins’ cartoon in 1926.  Then, the Edison Electric Institute was founded in 1933.  Collins left Alabama Power and joined EEI.

FERC’s treatment of rate of return for pipelines and electric transmission lines has been in the news recently. This reminded me of the plight of the very high-visibility and controversial rate-of-return and cost-of-capital witness. 

This poor expert has the dubious distinction of presenting testimony on a subject in which everyone, in my decades of experience in public utility rate cases, has an opinion. 

I am not kidding as I mean everyone.

On October 6, 1846, one of our industry’s greatest founders, George Westinghouse, was born in Central Bridge, New York. Just twenty-four miles from Schenectady, New York, which ultimately and ironically became the headquarters of Westinghouse’s chief rival, the Edison General Electric Company. 

On Friday, the Commerce Department released its data on consumer expenditures in August. Electric bills were 1.5 percent of expenditures. 

That’s a low percentage. But slightly higher than in recent Augusts. 

Electric bills were 1.44 percent of consumer expenditures in the last two Augusts, in 2015 and 2014. This August was six-hundredths of a percent higher.

A slightly higher percentage is not surprising. Electricity consumption was way up this summer.