The Energy Information Administration has updated its numbers for the average retail price for electricity to ultimate customers.
For January 2012, the most recent month available, the average residential price was 11.43 cents per kilowatt hour, the average commercial price was 9.88 cents per kilowatt hour, and the average industrial price was 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour. The EIA noted that unseasonably warm weather reduced sales of electricity in many states.
The 2011 average price was 11.8 cents per hour for residential use, 10.32 cents for commercial, 6.89 for industrial. That set a record for the highest annual average for residential use electricity.
Rates have increased steadily in the past five to six years, even during the lengthy recession and a time of sluggish economic growth at best. Back in 2005, the average price was 9.45 cents per hour for residential use, 8.67 cents for commercial, 5.73 for industrial. That set a record for the highest annual average for residential use electricity. These price increases have come while demand has grown quite slowly; the EIA reports that from 2000 to 2009, increases in electricity demand averaged 0.5 percent per year.
USA Today noted in December: “Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity. Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That’s the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s.”
If only someone had warned us that under Obama’s policies, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket… wait, someone did!
Barack Obama warned us under his plans, “electricity rates will necessary skyrocket…. Coal-powered plants, natural gas plants, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations, that will cost money, that they will pass that money on to consumers.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4
One can only imagine what prices will be when the EPA’s new “effective ban” on coal plants takes effect…