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Message| (1,829)    I noticed a signal of distress sent by the
electricity power sector. Yesterday, May 22, the Mid-Columbia
firm on peak spot electricity was selling for only $3.84 per
mega-watt-hour. That's 0.384 pennies per KWH. I have noticed
extremely low electricity prices in recent days. I wondered what
it is telling us.  See the 6 months and 5 years electricity
whole sale price charts below, obtained from Bloomberg. The URLs
are within the charts:  (Click to enlarge)  Now look at the
5-year electricity price chart below to get an idea what
electricity normally costs. Per MWH prices are normally $30 to
$50 or higher. But it reached a low of $3.00/MWH on May 22,
2012:  (Click to enlarge)  I did some calculations based on EIA
data. It costs 0.538 tons of coal or 7.752mmBtu of natural gas
to generate one MWH of electricity. (See cell H44 and I44 in the
data table) Currently, per MWH cost is $30 in coal and about the
same in natural gas.  Nee