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
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.
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.
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.
The Pulse, Shocker, Ghost in the Machine, The Darkest Hour
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.
Raskin v Wellinghoff/Cicchetti, Faruqui v King/Datta, Hogan v FERC pricing, Huntoon v Musk.
Received your March issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly? Then you saw the blood on the pages.
Nominate the most promising of the next generation of leaders in our business.
You all really got into my March 22nd column on the ten most influential in our business since 1990. I received a flood of e-mails from you.
You wanted to add this FERC chairman or that utility executive, this RTO founder or that thought leader. Or subtract someone that was on my initial list.
The column two days later summarized your comments. Did that put an end to the matter? No way. It only egged you on. Another flood of e-mails came in. There was even an organized write-in campaign, it was leaked to me, for a certain RTO founder.
Exelon Orioles, Cubs, White Sox, Phillies and Nationals on pace for a 104 win season.
The electricity for five major league baseball teams is delivered by Exelon. The Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and Washington Nationals.
When all five teams are playing at home, Exelon lights a third of baseball.
Three other utilities deliver electricity to two teams in the majors. Con Ed delivers to the New York Mets and New York Yankees. Pacific Gas and Electric delivers to the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants. Xcel Energy delivers to the Colorado Rockies and Minnesota Twins.
In extremely optimistic scenario for residential solar growth, output would still fall below 1% of 2020 electricity supply
Residential rooftop solar increased its output from 1.6 million megawatt-hours in the first four months of 2015 to 2.4 million megawatt-hours in the first four months of 2016. This according to the latest data of the Energy Department released Friday.
It's a large increase in percentage. Output from rooftops increased fifty percent.
At this high rate of increase, if it continued, January - April output would be 3.6 million in 2017, 5.4 million in 2018, 8.1 million in 2019, and 12.2 million in 2020.
How you feelin'? The latest Energy Dept. data says, hot hot hot.
US electricity use was 94.9 million megawatt-hours in the week ending July 22, 2016.
Continental US. Sorry Hawaii and Alaska.
That's 4.1 percent higher than the comparable week last July. And 9.4 percent higher than three weeks earlier, the week ending June 27.