Punishing tasks, growing old prematurely, dying before their time.
In 1984, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association published a remarkable history. "The Next Greatest Thing" chronicled the nation's electrification, outside of the cities especially, where most Americans still lived.
The first chapter, Because There Was No Electricity, tells a poignant story of how most lived. A woman's life was particularly hard, as we excerpt here:
92 pages, 20 articles, 24 authors including Flaherty, Jensen, Patterson, Hyman, etc., columns by EPRI and Nat. Governors Assn.
To whet your appetite for the June issue of PUF, here are three excerpts from my interview with Jim Fama, on his last day before retiring as EEI's vice pres. for transmission and distribution. An amazing career.
"Disney World was one of our partial requirements customers [at Florida Power Corp.].
One of my very first trips over there, I went to Epcot for a contract negotiation. Every one of their guys had a Disney 'My name is Bob' badge.
The Commerce Department published last week the gross domestic product data for the second quarter. Both electric service and natural gas service, as a percent of personal consumption expenditures, were real low.
In the second quarter, electric service was just 1.38 percent of expenditures. This was below the second quarter of last year, when electric service was 1.45 percent. And below the second quarter of two years ago, when electric service was 1.46 percent.
Average residential electric bill fell to four dollars daily in 2015
Four bucks a day. On the nose. That's what the average American household pays for their home's electric utility service.
Last week, the Labor Department released the results of the Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2015. It's the mother lode, on what consumers spend for everything, including electric and natural gas service.
The average daily electric bill is down seven cents from 2014. That's a 1.62 percent drop in electricity's cost to consumers. It would be a larger drop if you took inflation into account.
Nov. 17, 2016: Yesterday, the Labor Department published October’s producer price index for numerous goods and services.
You’re likely most interested in what’s happened to the price of turkey. Thanksgiving is just a week away. Great news! Turkey’s price is down 16.6 percent from last year.
Suppose you’re also interested in electricity and natural gas price trends.
The PPI for residential electricity is up 0.2 percent from October 2015. For commercial electricity, it’s up 0.5 percent.
Pertinent to rate design debate, variable falling further behind fixed cost
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.
Electric bills average four to four-and-a-half percent of expenditures of low income households
One of the primary concerns in utility regulation, rightfully so, is the affordability of electricity to low income households. So how are we doing in this critical area?
The answer can be found in the latest semi-annual Consumer Expenditure Survey by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. This survey has been providing extraordinary insights about what Americans buy, and what they spend, since the 1980's. It samples many thousands of households quarterly and repeatedly.
March 6th Democratic debate featured fracking food fight.
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 6th Democratic debate, where the presidential candidates had a food fight over fracking:
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.