A. RESIDENTIAL GAS AND ELECTRIC BASELOAD

The rates on the non-substitutable electric baseload, which cover such uses as lighting, refrigeration, and small appliances, showed moderate to large increases in 1973, continuing the upward trend evident since 1969. The typical monthly bills for a given amount of use increased in all nine of the standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSA) examined (one SMSA in each of the Census regions). (See Table 2—1 below.) The largest increase from January 1973 to January 1974 was in the New York SMSA, 45 per cent, which historically has shown the highest monthly bills. Other SMSAs with very large increases ranging from 20 per cent to 26 per cent were Boston, Los Angeles, and Nashville. All but Nashville are served by utilities that depend considerably on heavy fuel oil, which posted extremely large advances in price during 1973. The Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul SMSAs in the East and West North Central regions registered increases in the monthly bill of 3 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, the smallest of the SMSAs investigated.

The substitutable electric baseload monthly bills, which include such uses as water heaters, ranges, and clothes dryers, for which either electricity or gas may be used, followed the same pattern in 1973 as that of the electric non-substitutable baseload—except that the increases were substantially larger. In the New York SMSA, the electric substitutable baseload monthly bill in January 1974 was 58 per cent higher than in the same month of the previous year as compared with a 45 per cent gain in the non-substitutable baseload monthly bill. The same comparison in some other SMSAs reveals the following: Nashville—an increase of 56 per cent in the substitutable baseload monthly bill versus a 26 per cent increase