Join the leading utility innovators in Washington, D.C. October 6-8

PUF's Where's Energy

2019 Coal Under Million GWH?

EIA released data through the third quarter for grid non-renewable production of power. Notably, the power from the grid’s coal-fired plants was just about three-quarters of a million gigawatt-hours, on the nose nearly, in this year’s first three quarters.  

The grid’s coal plants produced ten percent more a quarter million gigs in last year’s fourth quarter. Assuming the fourth-quarter number will drop this year, by some amount, it shall be a close call as to whether 2019 coal output totals under or over a million gigs when all is said and done.

Wind Passes Hydro

The nation’s electric grid has always produced more of its power from hydroelectric facilities than from wind farms. In every year. Until now.

For the first time, wind is ahead of hydro, year-to-date, through the third quarter of the year.

That’s based on the latest data from the Energy Department’s Energy Info Admin. Affectionately known as EIA.

Here in San Antonio, Question of the Day

Down here, in San Antonio, at NARUC’s Annual Meeting, we’ll be asking the PUF Question of the Day, each day of the conference. How will you answer when asked?

Today’s PUF Questio n of the Day is, What do you want to hear about at this Annual Meeting?

Tomorrow’s Question of the Day will be, Have you used ideas discussed at prior NARUC meetings back home? Any examples?

And Wednesday’s Question of the Day will be, What was the most important thing said during this Annual Meeting?

Happy Sam Insull's Birthday!

Excerpted from “Sam Insull, Bill Nye, and the Urge to Innovate,” in the November 2019 special issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly on innovation:

“Today, the eleventh of November, is Samuel Insull’s Birthday. We’re in Insull’s debt for his many breakthroughs for the utilities industry, in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Not the least of which is, literally, the innovation of utility regulation.

From Insull’s memoirs:

Op-Ed by Georgia PSC Vice Chair Tim Echols

A battle is currently brewing between members of Congress to either terminate or expand the current seventy-five hundred dollar electric vehicle tax credit. They should learn from Georgia which in 2015 repealed the state’s robust electric car tax credit, and penalized electric car buyers with a fee. The move led to a nearly ninety percent drop in new electric car registrations and cost Georgia income, jobs and cleaner air. Here’s why Congress should not repeat Georgia’s mistake.

We Forecast Coal Under Billion

Public Utilities Fortnightly now forecasts that the U.S. grid’s coal plants will generate under a billion megawatt-hours this year. That would be big news in itself. But our forecast is that coal plant generation will fall further, below nine-tenths of a billion megawatt-hours.

Not since the late nineteen-seventies have coal plants produced so little power in the U.S. in a year. Which is extra remarkable because the U.S. grid’s overall production of power — from all generation sources — is now about twice what it was in the late nineteen-seventies.