Corona Chaos

Most everything is different now because of this corona thing. It’s corona chaos and even some of the constants of utility service and regulation are anything but. Like commercial consumption of electricity. Like residential consumption. Egads! Like bill collection and resilience planning and workforce management and regulatory procedure and well, a lot of other constants — heretofore — in our ways of working.

And it’s about to show up in the numbers. As just one example, the PUF team tracks and analyzes the affordability of electricity each month with the electric bills percentage. That is, the percent of overall personal consumption expenditures that go to paying residential electric bills.

In February, the electric bills percentage was 1.3 percent. That’s fairly low by historical standards, which is good. Over the last five Februarys, of the years 2016 through 2020, this measure of affordability has stayed within the range of 1.25 percent to 1.38 percent.

In the previous ten Februarys, of the years 2006 through 2015, this measure hung out in a higher range of 1.47 percent to 1.67 percent. Which wasn’t so good.

The March numbers aren’t out yet, not until April 29. But when the new numbers do come, we expect the electric bills percentage to soar. That’s because residential electric bills will increase big-time, with all of us at home, even taking into account many more late payments. And because overall expenditures by consumers will drop like a rock in this coronavirus economy.