Sometimes we get a little carried away with notions about our electric industry infrastructure being out of date. Some commentators have used the statement: 

"Thomas Edison would likely recognize much of today's infrastructure"

as some sort of proof of technological deficiency. Well, I do not believe it is correct, much less proof of obsolescence. 

December 2016's Producer Price Index, and its components, was published by the Labor Department on January 13. 

In the list of final demand, residential electricity was up just 0.6 percent in December, as compared to the prior December. While residential natural gas was up 8.2 percent. 

Overall, final demand goods - from pork to pet foods to pumps - were up 1.9 percent. Final demand services - from lawn equipment retailing to life insurance to legal services - were up 1.5 percent. 

We've been writing this week about how electric service has never been cheaper for the American consumer than in November. 

Never, ever, over the last 695 months, since January 1959. 

The Commerce Department publishes each month an extraordinarily detailed table on Americans' personal consumer expenditures. Its latest release shows that the share of consumer expenditures spent on electric service was an all-time low, 1.30 percent. 

We are the champions.
We are the champions.
No time for losers.
'Cause we are the champions of the world.

As we wrote yesterday, electric service has never been cheaper for the American consumer than it was in November. Never. Ever. 

Over the last 695 months! Since January 1959, when The Chipmunk Song and then Smoke Gets in Your Eyes made it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.
Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.

Electric service has never been cheaper for the American consumer than it was in November. Never. Ever.

Per the U.S. Commerce Department, specifically its Bureau of Economic Analysis. Since January 1959, monthly, the Bureau publishes an extraordinarily detailed table on Americans' personal consumer expenditures. To estimate the Gross Domestic Product.

On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
The filing in a new docket

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two cost of capital testimonies
and the filing in a new docket

Luckily for former Texas Governor Rick Perry, he's not the first nominee to be Secretary of the Department of Energy to call for the abolishment of that department. That honor goes to former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham who, while a member of the Senate, actually co-sponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy!

Abraham writes about this curious episode is his very readable and useful book Lights Out: The Ten Myths About (and Real Solutions to) America's Energy Crisis, St. Martin's Press, 2010.

Was I dreaming? Things were slow at Public Utilities Fortnightly. I needed to supplement my Editor-in-Chief pay. 

I applied and, for some reason, was hired as the night watchman at the Newseum. That's the popular interactive museum near the U.S. Capitol on the history of the news and press freedom. 

What happened next is hard to explain. That first night, the Newseum came alive. 

The Energy Department reported that residential solar generated 981 thousand megawatt-hours of electricity in September. Let's see what was its share of total electric generation, nationally and in key states.

We add together utility scale and distributed generation from all sectors including the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Total generation in September was 353,484 thousand megawatt-hours.

So, nationally, residential solar's share of total generation was 0.3 percent.

The Commerce Department has published detailed consumer expenditure data since 1959, as part of the estimation of the Gross Domestic Product. It published last week the numbers for October of this year.

For just the twenty-fifth month, out of six hundred and ninety-four months since 1959, electric bills fell below 1.4 percent of consumer expenditures.

From January 1959 through October 1999, electric bills had never fallen below 1.4 percent. November 1999 was the first time.