The number of solar industry jobs, now said to be 209 thousand, is widely reported and cited. President Obama included, as during his speech last April, announcing a program to train retiring military and veterans to work in solar.

The source for the number of solar jobs is an annual survey conducted by The Solar Foundation. The findings of the latest survey were published a couple of weeks ago in the "National Solar Jobs Census 2015." 

The Labor Department reported last week the Consumer Price Index, the CPI, for December 2015. 

The CPI for all goods and services increased 0.7 percent during the twelve months through December. That's a low rate of inflation. The CPI for electricity specifically decreased 1.2 percent during the same twelve months. That's a medium rate of deflation.

The public naturally believes that most electric utility costs are variable, if only because utility bills are mainly based on per kilowatt-hour rates. Utilities' fixed costs, for generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure, are largely invisible to the average person.

November 2015 new house sales were 4 percent greater than the prior month and 9 percent greater than November 2014. More importantly, from the perspective of the electric utility industry, as well as the natural gas utility industry, new house sales in the South were 5 percent greater than the prior month and 19 percent greater than November 2014.

What happens in the South is crucial to the national numbers on electricity. To show why, look at the regional breakdown of electricity sales.

Coal has always produced the most electricity for the grid, compared to other sources, until a few recent months when coal was temporarily surpassed by natural gas. That's what the panelist said, in a seminar last week about electric utilities.

It's true that coal has led. But hydro ran neck and neck with coal well into the 1930's. And up until 1947, hydro produced over a third of the grid's electricity.