Consumers in Power Markets Will Soon Change the Industry

US Electricity Sales Decline amid population growth and GDP gains, as DOE links reduced per capita consumption to energy efficiency, warmer winters, appliances, and bulbs, while hotter summers and rising AC demand may offset savings.

Key Points

US electricity sales fell 3% since 2010 despite population and GDP growth, driven by efficiency gains and warmer winters.

✅ DOE links drops to efficiency and warmer winters

✅ Per capita residential use fell about 7% since 2010

✅ Rising AC demand may offset winter heating savings

Since 2010, the United States has grown by 17 million people, and the gross domestic product (GDP) has increased by $3.6 trillion. Yet in that same time span, electricity sales in the United States actually declined by 3%, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), even as electricity prices rose at a 41-year pace nationwide.

The U.S. decline in electricity sales is remarkable given that the U.S. population increased by 5.8% in that same time span. This means that per capita electricity use fell even more than that; indeed, the Department of Energy pegs residential electricity sales per capita as having declined by 7%, even as inflation-adjusted residential bills rose 5% in 2022 nationwide.

There are likely multiple reasons for this decline in electricity sales. Department of Energy analysts suggest that, at least in part, it is due to increased adoption of energy-efficient appliances and bulbs, like compact fluorescents. Indeed, the DOE notes that there is a correlation between consumer spending on “energy efficiency” and a reduction in per capita electricity sales, while utilities invest more in delivery infrastructure to modernize the grid.

Yet the DOE also notes that states with a greater increase in warm weather days had a corresponding decrease in electricity sales, as milder weather can reduce power demand across years. In southern states, the effect was most dramatic: for instance, from 2010 to 2016, Florida had a 56% decrease in cold weather days that would require heating and as a result, saw a 9% decrease in per capita electricity sales.

The moral is that warm winters save on electricity. But if global temperatures continue to rise, and summers become hotter, too, this decrease in winter heating spending may be offset by the increased need to run air conditioning in the summer, and given how electricity and natural gas prices interact, overall energy costs could shift. Indeed, it takes far more energy to cool a room than it does to heat it, for reasons related to the basic laws of thermodynamics. 

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Nuclear Power Construction Milestones spotlight EPR builds, Hualong One steam generators, APR-1400 grid integration, and VVER startups, with hot functional testing, hydrostatic checks, and commissioning advancing toward fuel loading and commercial operation.

Key Points

Key reactor project steps, from testing and grid readiness to startup, marking progress toward safe commercial operation.

✅ EPR units advance through cold and hot functional testing

✅ Hualong One installs 365-ton steam generators at Fuqing 5

✅ APR-1400 and VVER projects progress toward grid connection

The world’s nuclear power industry has been busy in the new year, with several construction projects, including U.S. reactor builds, reaching key milestones as 2018 began.

EPR Units Making Progress

Four EPR nuclear units are under construction in three countries: Olkiluoto 3 in Finland began construction in August 2005, Flamanville 3 in France began construction in December 2007, and Taishan 1 and 2 in China began construction in November 2009. Each of the new units is behind schedule and over budget, but recent progress may signal an end to some of the construction difficulties.

EDF reported that cold functional tests were completed at Flamanville 3 on January 6. The main purpose of the testing was to confirm the integrity of primary systems, and verify that components important to reactor safety were properly installed and ready to operate. More than 500 welds were inspected while pressure was held greater than 240 bar (3,480 psi) during the hydrostatic testing, which was conducted under the supervision of the French Nuclear Safety Authority.

With cold testing successfully completed, EDF can now begin preparing for hot functional tests, which verify equipment performance under normal operating temperatures and pressures. Hot testing is expected to begin in July, with fuel loading and reactor startup possible by year end. The company also reported that the total cost for the unit is projected to be €10.5 billion (in 2015 Euros, excluding interim interest).

Olkiluoto 3 began hot functional testing in December. Teollisuuden Voima Oyj—owner and operator of the site—expects the unit to produce its first power by the end of this year, with commercial operation now slated to begin in May 2019.

Although work on Taishan 1 began years after Olkiluoto 3 and Flamanville 3, it is the furthest along of the EPR units. Reports surfaced on January 2 that China General Nuclear (CGN) had completed hot functional testing on Taishan 1, and that the company expects the unit to be the first EPR to startup. CGN said Taishan 1 would begin commercial operation later this year, with Taishan 2 following in 2019.

Hualong One Steam Generators Installed

Another Chinese project reached a notable milestone on January 8. China National Nuclear Corp. announced the third of three steam generators had been installed at the Hualong One demonstration project, which is being constructed as Unit 5 at the Fuqing nuclear power plant.

The Hualong One pressurized water reactor unit, also known as the HPR 1000, is a domestically developed design, part of China’s nuclear program, based on a French predecessor. It has a 1,090 MW capacity. The steam generators reportedly weigh 365 metric tons and stand more than 21 meters tall. The first steam generator was installed at Fuqing 5 on November 10, with the second placed on Christmas Eve.

Barakah Switchyard Energized

In the United Arab Emirates, more progress has been made on the four South Korean–designed APR-1400 units under construction at the Barakah nuclear power plant. On January 4, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp. (ENEC) announced that the switchyard for Units 3 and 4 had been energized and connected to the power grid, a crucial step in Abu Dhabi toward completion. Unit 2’s main power transformer, excitation transformer, and auxiliary power transformer were also energized in preparation for hot functional testing on that unit.

“These milestones are a result of our extensive collaboration with our Prime Contractor and Joint Venture partner, the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO),” ENEC CEO Mohamed Al Hammadi said in a press release. “Working together and benefitting from the experience gained when conducting the same work on Unit 1, the teams continue to make significant progress while continuing to implement the highest international standards of safety, security and quality.”

In 2017, ENEC and KEPCO achieved several construction milestones including installation and concrete pouring for the reactor containment building liner dome section on Unit 3, and installation of the reactor containment liner plate rings, reactor vessel, steam generators, and condenser on Unit 4.

Construction began on the four units (Figure 1) in July 2012, May 2013, September 2014, and September 2015, respectively. Unit 1 is currently undergoing commissioning and testing activities while awaiting regulatory review and receipt of the unit’s operating license from the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, before achieving 100% power in a later phase. According to ENEC, Unit 2 is 90% complete, Unit 3 is 79% complete, and Unit 4 is 60% complete.

VVER Units Power Up

On December 29, Russia’s latest reactor to commence operation—Rostov 4 near the city of Volgodonsk—reached criticality, as other projects like Leningrad II-1 advance across the fleet, and was operated at its minimum controlled reactor power (MCRP). Criticality is a term used in the nuclear industry to indicate that each fission event in the reactor is releasing a sufficient number of neutrons to sustain an ongoing series of reactions, which means the neutron population is constant and the chain reaction is stable.

“The transfer to the MCRP allows [specialists] to carry out all necessary physical experiments in the critical condition of [the] reactor unit (RU) to prove its design criteria,” Aleksey Deriy, vice president of Russian projects for ASE Engineering Co., said in a press release. “Upon the results of the experiments the specialists will decide on the RU powerup.”

Rostov 4 is a VVER-1000 reactor with a capacity of 1,000 MW. The site is home to three other VVER units: Unit 1 began commercial operation in 2001, Unit 2 in 2010, and Unit 3 in 2015.

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Netherlands renewable energy progress highlights rising wind energy and solar power output, delivering 17 billion kWh of green electricity from sustainable sources, yet trailing EU targets, with wind providing 60% and solar 34%.

Key Points

It is the country's growth in green electricity, led by wind and solar, yet short of EU targets at 13.8% of generation.

✅ 17 billion kWh green output; 13.8% of total generation

✅ Wind energy up 16% to 9.6 billion kWh; 60% of green power

✅ Solar power up about 13%; 34% of renewable production

The Netherlands is generating more electricity from sustainable sources as US renewable record 28% in April underscores broader momentum but is still far from reaching its targets, the national statistics office CBS said on Friday.

In total, the Netherlands produced 17 billion kilowatts of green energy last year, a rise of 10% on 2016. Sustainable sources now account for 13.8 per cent of energy generation, even as solar reshapes prices in Northern Europe across the region.

The biggest growth was in wind energy – up 16 per cent to 9.6 billion kWh – or the equivalent of energy for three million households. Wind energy now accounts for 60 per cent of green Dutch power. The amount of solar power, which accounts for 34% of green energy production, rose almost 13 per cent, and Dutch solar outpaces Canada according to recent reports.

In January, European statistics agency Eurostat said the Netherlands is near the bottom of a new table on renewable energy use in Europe. The EU has a target of a fifth of all energy use from green sources by 2020 and – while some countries have reached their own targets, including Germany's 50% clean power milestones – the Dutch, French and Irish need to increase their rates by at least 6%, Eurostat said, and Ireland has set green electricity goals for the next four years to close the gap.

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Maine Climate Council Act targets 80% renewable power by 2030 and 100% by 2050, slashing greenhouse gas emissions via clean electricity, grid procurement, long-term contracts, wind and hydro integration, resilience planning, and carbon sequestration.

Key Points

A Maine policy forming a Climate Council to reach 80% renewables in 2030 100% in 2050 and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

✅ 80% renewable electricity by 2030; 100% by 2050.

✅ 45% GHG cut by 2030; 80% by 2050.

✅ Utility procurement authority for clean capacity and energy.

The winds of change have shifted and are blowing Northward, as Maine’s Governor, Janet T. Mills, has put forth an act establishing a Climate Council to guide the state’s consumption to 80% renewable electricity in 2030 and 100% by 2050, echoing New York's Green New Deal ambitions underway.

The act, LR 2478 (pdf), also sets a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% in 2030 and 80% by 2050. The document will be submitted to the state Legislature for consideration.

The commission would have the authority to direct investor owned transmission and distribution utilities to run competitive procurement processes, and enter into long-term contracts for capacity resources, energy resources, renewable energy credit contracts, and participate in regional programs, as these all lead toward the clean electricity and emissions-reducing goals that mirror California's 100% mandate debates today.

The Climate Council would convene industry working groups, including Scientific and Technical, Transportation, Coastal and Marine, Energy, and Building & Infrastructure working groups, plus others as needed, where examples like New Zealand's electricity transition could inform discussions.

Membership within the council would include two members of the State Senate, two members of the House, a tribal representative, many department commissioners (Education, Defense, Transportation, etc.), multiple directors, business representatives, environmental non-profit members, and climate science and resilience representatives as well.

The council would update the Maine State Climate Plan every four years, and solicit input from the public and report out progress on its goals every two years, similar to planning underway in Minnesota's carbon-free plan framework. The first Climate Action Plan would be submitted to the legislature by December 1, 2020.

Specifically, the responsibilities of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee were laid out. The group would be scheduled to meet at least every six months, beginning no later than October 1, 2019. The group would be tasked with reviewing existing scientific literature, including net-zero electricity pathways research, to use it as guidance, recognizing gaps in the state’s knowledge, and guiding outside experts to ascertain this knowledge.  The group would consider ocean acidification, and climate change effects on the state’s species; establish science-based sea-level rise projections for the state’s coastal regions by December 1, 2020; create a climate risk map for flooding and extreme weather events; and consider carbon sequestration via biomass growth.

The state’s largest power plants (above image), generate about 31% from gas, 28% from wood and 41% from hydro+wind. Already, the state has a very clean electricity profile, much like efforts to decarbonize Canada's power sector continue apace. Below, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) notes that 51% of electricity generation within the state comes from mostly wind+hydro, with a small touch from solar power. The state also gets 24% from wood and other biomass, which would lead some to argue that the state is already at 75% “renewable electricity”. The Governor’s document does reference wind power specifically as a renewable, however, no other specific electricity source. And there is much reference to forestry, agriculture, and logging – specifically noting carbon sequestration – but nothing regarding electricity.

The state’s final 25% of electricity mostly comes from natural gas, even as renewable electricity momentum builds across North America, with this author choosing to put “other” under the fossil percentage noted above.

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U.S. power grid cyberattacks expose critical infrastructure to Russian hackers, DHS warns, targeting SCADA, smart grid sensors, and utilities; NERC CIP defenses, microgrids, and resilience planning aim to mitigate outages and supply chain disruptions.

Key Points

U.S. power grid cyberattacks target utility control systems, risking outages, disruption, requiring stronger defenses.

✅ Russian access to utilities and SCADA raises outage risk

✅ NERC CIP, DHS, and utilities expand cyber defenses

✅ Microgrids and renewables enhance resilience, islanding capability

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has revealed that Russian government hackers accessed control rooms at hundreds of U.S. electrical utility companies, gaining far more access to the operations of many more companies than previously disclosed by federal officials.

Securing the electrical grid, upon which is built almost the entirety of modern society, is a monumental challenge. Several experts have explained aspects of the task, potential solutions and the risks of failure for The Conversation:

1. What’s at stake?

The scale of disruption would depend, in part, on how much damage the attackers wanted to do. But a major cyberattack on the electricity grid could send surges through the grid, much as solar storms have done.

Those events, explains Rochester Institute of Technology space weather scholar Roger Dube, cause power surges, damaging transmission equipment. One solar storm in March 1989, he writes, left “6 million people without power for nine hours … [and] destroyed a large transformer at a New Jersey nuclear plant. Even though a spare transformer was nearby, it still took six months to remove and replace the melted unit.”

More serious attacks, like larger solar storms, could knock out manufacturing plants that build replacement electrical equipment, gas pumps to fuel trucks to deliver the material and even “the machinery that extracts oil from the ground and refines it into usable fuel. … Even systems that seem non-technological, like public water supplies, would shut down: Their pumps and purification systems need electricity.”

In the most severe cases, with fuel-starved transportation stalled and other basic infrastructure not working, “[p]eople in developed countries would find themselves with no running water, no sewage systems, no refrigerated food, and no way to get any food or other necessities transported from far away. People in places with more basic economies would also be without needed supplies from afar.”

2. It wouldn’t be the first time

Russia has penetrated other countries’ electricity grids in the past, and used its access to do real damage. In the middle of winter 2015, for instance, a Russian cyberattack shut off the power to Ukraine’s capital in the middle of winter 2015.

Power grid scholar Michael McElfresh at Santa Clara University discusses what happened to cause hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to lose power for several hours, and notes that U.S. utilities use software similar to their Ukrainian counterparts – and therefore share the same vulnerabilities.

3. Security work is ongoing

These threats aren’t new, write grid security experts Manimaran Govindarasu from Iowa State and Adam Hahn from Washington State University. There are a lot of people planning defenses, including the U.S. government, as substation attacks are growing across the country. And the “North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees the grid in the U.S. and Canada, has rules … for how electric companies must protect the power grid both physically and electronically.” The group holds training exercises in which utility companies practice responding to attacks.

4. There are more vulnerabilities now

Grid researcher McElfresh also explains that the grid is increasingly complex, with with thousands of companies responsible for different aspects of generating, transmission, and delivery to customers. In addition, new technologies have led companies to incorporate more sensors and other “smart grid” technologies. He describes how that, as a recent power grid report card underscores, “has created many more access points for penetrating into the grid computer systems.”

5. It’s time to ramp up efforts

The depth of access and potential control over electrical systems means there has never been a better time than right now to step up grid security amid a renewed focus on protecting the grid among policymakers and utilities, writes public-utility researcher Theodore Kury at the University of Florida. He notes that many of those efforts may also help protect the grid from storm damage and other disasters.

6. A possible solution could be smaller grids

One protective effort was identified by electrical engineer Joshua Pearce at Michigan Technological University, who has studied ways to protect electricity supplies to U.S. military bases both within the country and abroad. He found that the Pentagon has already begun testing systems, as the military ramps up preparation for major grid hacks, that combine solar-panel arrays with large-capacity batteries. “The equipment is connected together – and to buildings it serves – in what is called a ‘microgrid,’ which is normally connected to the regular commercial power grid but can be disconnected and become self-sustaining when disaster strikes.”

He found that microgrid systems could make military bases more resilient in the face of cyberattacks, criminals or terrorists and natural disasters – and even help the military “generate all of its electricity from distributed renewable sources by 2025 … which would provide energy reliability and decrease costs, [and] largely eliminate a major group of very real threats to national security.”

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U.S. Electricity Demand Decoupling signals GDP growth without higher load, driven by energy efficiency, LED adoption, services-led output, and rising renewables integration with the grid, plus EV charging and battery storage supporting decarbonization.

Key Points

GDP grows as electricity use stays flat, driven by efficiency, renewables, and a shift toward services and output.

✅ LEDs and codes cut residential and commercial load intensity.

✅ Wind, solar, and gas gain share as coal and nuclear struggle.

✅ EVs and storage can grow load and enable grid decarbonization.

By Justin Fox

Economic growth picked up a little in the U.S. in 2017. But electricity use fell, with electricity sales projections continuing to decline, according to data released recently by the Energy Information Administration. It's now been basically flat for more than a decade:

Measured on a per-capita basis, electricity use is in clear decline, and is already back to the levels of the mid-1990s.

Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

*Includes small-scale solar generation from 2014 onward

I constructed these charts to go all the way back to 1949 in part because I can (that's how far back the EIA data series goes) but also because it makes clear what a momentous change this is. Electricity use rose and rose and rose and then ... it didn't anymore.

Slower economic growth since 2007 has been part of the reason, but the 2017 numbers make clear that higher gross domestic product no longer necessarily requires more electricity, although the Iron Law of Climate is often cited to suggest rising energy use with economic growth. I wrote a column last year about this big shift, and there's not a whole lot new to say about what's causing it: mainly increased energy efficiency (driven to a remarkable extent by the rise of LED light bulbs), and the continuing migration of economic activity away from making tangible things and toward providing services and virtual products such as games and binge-watchable TV series (that are themselves consumed on ever-more-energy-efficient electronic devices).

What's worth going over, though, is what this means for those in the business of generating electricity. The Donald Trump administration has made saving coal-fired electric plants a big priority; the struggles of nuclear power plants have sparked concern from multiple quarters. Meanwhile, U.S. natural gas production has grown by more than 40 percent since 2007, thanks to hydraulic fracturing and other new drilling techniques, while wind and solar generation keep making big gains in cost and market share. And this is all happening within the context of a no-growth electricity market.

In China, a mystery in China's electricity data has complicated global comparisons.

Here are the five main sources of electric power in the U.S.:

The big story over the past decade has been coal and natural gas trading places as the top fuel for electricity generation. Over the past year and a half coal regained some of that lost ground as natural gas prices rose from the lows of early 2016. But with overall electricity use flat and production from wind and solar on the rise, that hasn't translated into big increases in coal generation overall.

Oh, and about solar. It's only a major factor in a few states (California especially), so it doesn't make the top five. But it's definitely on the rise.

What happens next? For power generators, the best bet for breaking out of the current no-growth pattern is to electrify more of the U.S. economy, especially transportation. A big part of the attraction of electric cars and trucks for policy-makers and others is their potential to be emissions-free. But they're only really emissions-free if the electricity used to charge them is generated in an emissions-free manner -- creating a pretty strong business case for continuing "decarbonization" of the electric industry. It's conceivable that electric car batteries could even assist in that decarbonization by storing the intermittent power generated by wind and solar and delivering it back onto the grid when needed.

I don't know exactly how all this will play out. Nobody does. But the business of generating electricity isn't going back to its pre-2008 normal. 

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