A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Can you imagine paying 36 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity? In the mainland United States? Well, if you buy your electricity from San Diego Gas and Electric, a privately owned utility, reports the Los Angeles Times, that’s what you’ll pay for 2,000 kWhrs a month. But if you’re connected to a municipal electrical utility, you’ll pay approximately half as much.
And if you buy those 2,000 kWhrs/mth from the Flathead Electric Cooperative, you’ll pay approximately a quarter as much.
After running the numbers for FEC, I added them to the table below from the LA Times’ story:
Private utilities in Southern California rely heavily on hydrocarbon fueled thermal plants. Flathead Electric buys most of its power from the Bonneville Power Administration. That’s mostly hydroelectric power from the Columbia River System, which is inexpensive compared to steam plants such as Colstrip.
But FEC’s price for 200 kWhrs a month is higher than both the private and public average of California prices reported by the LA Times. That’s because FEC levies a whopping $22.71 per month base charge on its residential customers. FEC customers who purchase 200 kWhrs a month pay $34.89, which is 17.4 cents per kWhr. FEC power is cheap compared to California power only if you use a lot of it.