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PUR Guide 2012 Fully Updated Version

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PUF's Where's Energy

What Affordability Means

There are multiple definitions of affordability, none all that precise.

Ratemaking and Consumer Behavior

What’s a utility provider to do when talking about rate increase proposals?

January's Electric and Gas Rates

Overall CPI was up 3.1% from January 2023 for all goods and services.

PUF Affordability Seminars

Publication of “The Electric Affordability Factbook” on the seventeenth of January and “Modeling Affordability of the Energy Transformation” on the first of February has stirred a lot of interest in this research and its implications.

 

So, the Public Utilities Fortnightly team has developed two seminars. One for an organization’s leaders and communications professionals. One for an organization’s analysts and regulatory professionals. Brief descriptions below.

Fun Fact of the Week

American consumers paid 20.6 times more per household in Q4 2023 than in Q4 1959, adjusting for population growth.

Electric Rates 1/40th of the CPI

Electricity is 2.522 percent of the Consumer Price Index. As a fraction, that’s about one-fortieth.

Other components of the CPI with a similar weight on this all-important measure of inflation? Full service meals and snacks, like restaurants, have a weight in the CPI of 2.324. Limited service meals and snacks, like fast food, have a weight of 2.272.

Apparel has a weight in the CPI of 2.464. Used cars and trucks have a weight of 2.544. Hospitals and related services have a weight of 2.308. Motor vehicle insurance has a weight of 2.874.

PUF's Electric Bill Affordability Index

The Electric Bill Affordability Index tracks how much consumers can afford other stuff.

Where's Affordability

Electricity has generally been a shrinking part of consumer expenditures since the great recession, while consumer expenditures have grown.

Electric Affordability Factbook

Public Utilities Fortnightly has published the sixty-page Electric Affordability Factbook. It provides new quantitative detail on those electric utility residential customers that are struggling with affordability.

You can freely download the Factbook here or view the online flipbook.

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