Continuing from yesterday's column. You might find of interest this excerpt of the March 6th Democratic debate.

The presidential candidates finished their food fight over fracking. Then they clashed over climate change plans: 

CNN's Anderson Cooper: Senator Sanders ... there are a number of Democratic governors in many states who say that fracking can be done safely. And that it's helping their economies. Are they wrong?  

Most of you know the abundance of natural gas, hence its low price, is due to the fracking revolution.  And that the public's electric and gas utility bills are relatively low as a result.

So you might find of interest this transcript of the March 6^th Democratic debate, where the presidential candidates had a food fight over fracking:  

You knew something was up when you received your February issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly. It had more pages and more features. And a new attractive look and feel. 

By now you’ve received your March issue. Still more pages and more features. And an even more attractive look and feel. 

Was visiting NARUC last week. We were talking about Commissioner Ruth Kretschmer of Illinois, who retired after nearly twenty years in 2003. You may recall the column I recently wrote about her, the longest serving female regulator of utilities. 

Which begs the question. Who was the longest serving commissioner, period, male or female?

Across

5. order one ___: thousand

7. watcher of RTO: monitor

9. ___ charge adjustment: annual

11. planning for the whole east: eipc

12. how many megawatts can go: atc

13. in charge of a hearing: alj

14. agency before FERC: fpc

16. accepted as a power plant: qf

17. contract you can count on: firm

18. lines that FERC approves: pipelines

20. big gas law: ngpa

21. depression era law: puhca

23. Carter law: purpa

26. region without markets: south

27. supply's opposite: demand 

Received your March issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly? Then you saw the blood on the pages. 

The fateful year 1929 ushered in two milestones in the history of publishing. That January, just nine months before the stock market crash, Public Utilities Fortnightly put out its first issue. Even more monumental, that same month saw the debut of The Funnies, the predecessor to the American comic book.

The Funnies laid the groundwork for Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics, started in 1933. Historians consider it the first true comic book. 

Those depression years were a time of despair. Comics offered welcome if temporary relief.

"Elections and Electrons: Who Will Win in '96," was the article's title, in the March 15, 1996 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, 20 years ago. The author analyzed annual electricity sales growth and observed weak growth in the years that President Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, in 1980, and that George H.W. Bush lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton, in 1992.

How many lights are there in a home? The Energy Department counted. In a report published three years ago, for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, it estimated that there were 67 lights in the average American home.

Seems like a lot. But you have to include everything. The six-bulb chandelier. That's six lights. The lights in the garage, those at the front steps, in closets and the cellar. Those are totaled too.

A house's bedrooms have 16 lights on average. And the bathrooms have another 10. The exterior has another 9. 

Yesterday's column said that zero-emissions electricity amounted to an impressive 37.4 percent of grid electricity in December 2015. It looks like we have the greenest grid in anyone's memory.

Where did that 120,633 thousand megawatt-hours of electricity come from that emitted no greenhouse gases? Including the clean power produced by distributed generation.