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Law & Lawyers

Fortnight Editorial: Like Wind and Solar

Heated nuclear debate among climate activists critical to us all

We've all heard it said so many times, a variation of:

"By 2050 (or some other year in the future), a hundred percent (or some other high percent) of our electricity will come from renewables like wind and solar."

A key phrase is at the very end.  The words "like wind and solar" imply there's a list of renewables that'll dramatically ramp up their share of the electric generation mix, a list in which wind and solar are merely examples.  

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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Electric Bills Down to 1.37 Percent

For ten straight months, electricity 1.5 percent or less of consumer expenditures

The Commerce Department last week reported the gross domestic product. A major component of the GDP is personal consumption expenditures, what is spent by American households on all goods and services. Plus what is spent on their behalf, by insurance companies for example.

A tiny slice of consumer expenditures is our electric bills. How tiny? In December 2015, just 1.37 percent of expenditures were to pay for electricity. 

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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PUF Funnies: Informing and Amusing

The New Yorker cartoons, our cartoonist Tim Kirby, plus Reddy Kilowatt

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.

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Substantial Minimum Charge in Electric Bills

Fixed minimum charge was a much higher percent of electric bills in 1940 Wisconsin.

The fixed minimum charge was a much higher percent of electric bills in 1940 in Wisconsin. This was common throughout the country, from Maine to Mississippi, Massachusetts to Montana.

Over the years, the fixed charge remained, well, mostly fixed with little adjustment for inflation. But the variable charges in electric bills continually rose with inflation and with growing kilowatt-hour consumption. 

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It's a Gas

Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Cab Calloway, James Baldwin, Rolling Stones, and natural gas

"She is come at last - at last - and all is gas and goiters." —Charles Dickens, "Nicholas Nickleby," 1839

"[The slingshot] to have some gas with the birds." —James Joyce, "Dubliners: An Encounter," 1914

"When it comes to dancing, she's a gasser." —Cab Calloway, "The Hepsters Dictionary," 1944

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Electric Rates and Bills Down This Year, Despite Summer

Residential rates were 0.9% lower than last year, and commercial rates were 2.7% lower

The Energy Department reports that the average residential rate for electric service was lower than last year in every month this year through August (the latest month of the data). Except this March.

It also reports that the average commercial rate was lower than last year in every month this year. No exceptions.

Year-to-date, the average residential rate was 12.54 cents per kilowatt-hour this year. That’s lower than last year, by 0.9 percent, when it was 12.65 cents.

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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Real Electric Price Fell in South, Midwest, Northeast

Gap between overall and electric CPI was quite dramatic in South, dramatic in the Midwest, significant in the Northeast.

The Labor Department just published December's Consumer Price Index. The CPI for all consumer goods and services was up 2.1 percent from the prior December. The CPI for residential electric service was up 0.7 percent. 

The wide gap between the CPI for all goods and services and for electric service, 1.4 percent, means the real price for electricity fell significantly. 

The fall in the real price for electricity is clearer when we look regionally. 

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Reddy Kilowatt Versus Willie Wiredhand

US District Court ruled in 1956 for Willie

The epic battle was played out in US District Court, Eastern District South Carolina, Judge Harry Watkins presiding. In this grudge match of 60 years ago, nothing less than the icons of the investor-owned and rural cooperative utilities were at stake.  

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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Electricity Horror Movies

The Pulse, Shocker, Ghost in the Machine, The Darkest Hour

The Pulse (1988)

An intelligent pulse of electricity moves from house to house. It's really a smart grid. 

It terrorizes households by taking control of their appliances. The Internet of things run amok. The pulse kills some people but others wreck their house fighting it. Then the pulse travels along the power lines to the next house, and the horror repeats itself.

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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