Insull, of course, gets no credit for the cars, but many of the other things we use electricity for at night we can thank him for zealously promoting, including a rate structure that rewards nighttime electricity use, but also home refrigerators and hot water heaters which, until the rise of the conservation movement in the 1970s, were phenomenally hungry appliances, and even today remain—with air-conditioning—the most electrically intensive items in a home.
