FERC Chasing the Uncatchable

Trying to fix mandatory capacity markets like trying to win whack-a-mole, Part I

FERC’s efforts to get capacity markets “right” have led to endless – and futile – tinkering. The cure proposed – making capacity auction markets mandatory – has unfortunately proved far worse than the disease.

Nuclear Debate: Hansen is Wrong about Nuclear Power

Nuclear, a drain on our ability to deal with climate solutions, energy needs.

Dr. James Hansen, the renowned climate change scientist, has said that nuclear power is essential to combat climate change. We disagree. Nuclear energy is a boondoggle.

Consumers Want What?

Rather than accept the rhetoric, let’s find out.

What’s missing is asking consumers to consider realistic tradeoffs between two characteristics of electricity rather than the desirability of a single characteristic in isolation.

Even More on New Consumer Survey on Electric Bills

Friday’s data release from Labor Dept.: what are similar expenses to electric bills for the average household?

This week's columns have analyzed the brand new Labor Department data on how much American households spent on everything during the year ending June 2015, including electricity.

The semi-annual Consumer Expenditure Survey is the source for understanding Americans' electric bills by region, income, age, urban/rural, etc. The government actually asks many thousands of households each quarter to track every single purchase. The credibility and detail, especially through mining the micro-data, is unequalled. 

More on New Consumer Survey on Electric Bills

Friday’s data release from Labor Dept.: average electric bill fell 1.2%.

As we wrote yesterday, it's like Christmas in April. On Friday, the Labor Department came down the chimney with how much American households spent on pork, postage, pets, personal care products, pensions, and everything else during the year ending June 2015, including electricity.

New Consumer Survey on Electric Bills

Friday’s data release from Labor Dept.: Westerners pay $3.27/day for electricity, Midwesterners $3.44, Easterners $3.73.

Like Christmas in April, we're surrounded by sumptuous surprises. On Friday, the Labor Department came down the chimney with how much American households spent on pork, postage, pets, personal care products, pensions, and everything else during the year ending June 2015, including electricity.

My Electric Bill

My utility keeps and makes money on PSC-set delivery charges, $15.51, 29 percent of my latest electric bill, or 47 cents per day.

My electric bill this month is $53.41. For the 33 days through April 5th, the electricity for our three-bedroom Victorian house cost $1.62 per day, or 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. 

We took just 383 kilowatt-hours from the grid. It's not much. The national average is nearly three times that amount. But this bill of mine covered parts of March and April when air conditioning isn't used.

My bills have been this way for six straight months, since mid-October of last year. We've been taking 353 to 409 kilowatt-hours per month. 

Nuclear Prevented 23 Billion Tons CO2 Emissions

Nuclear didn’t make electricity too cheap to meter, but it fortunately was a strong weapon against climate change.

Opponents sometimes mock utilities by invoking the infamous prediction that electricity will become "too cheap to meter." But it was the federal government, not utilities, that said this.

The Eisenhower Administration's chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, made the infamous prediction in a 1954 speech to science writers. He wasn't even referring to the nuclear technology that utilities would start using a decade later.