We have them the utility here raised our rates after they went on line, they say that the supply isnt stable enough and they need to run their generators constantly anyway to balance the load,,, my average electric bill is actually not 168$ mine runs an average of 475 a month run a small walk in refer for farm produce, one of the stores I sell to is a dive hole in the wall natural foods store they pay over $30,000 a month for electricity, scarry stuff,,, deisel fuel at the lowest priced place where most of the farmers have an account is 4.76 a gallon, gasoline is running between 4.30 and 4.75 depending on grade, energy is a problem, energy costs are a problem, and good luck getting enough money together to do a solar system, the cost of a system that would run my house and refrigeration is around 75,000 thats a little hard to come by, and if you do a grid tie system you still have to pay the utility a fee.

I live on the Big Island of Hawaii. We have 2 large wind farms, one at South Point and one in South Kahola. We live off grid on solar. Helco sticks it to those that live on grid on power, but we have no need for heat or air conditioning, It's 81 high and 68 low--year around.

I moved to Colorado for 5 months and came back. I'll pay a little more to live virtually pollution free any day.

This is an agrarian island. Our cows are not fed steroids or antibiotics--just range fed. Our fruit and veggies are organic, for the most. Our waters are clear, clean, and blue--and we have virtually no crime. I wouldn't trade my life for a mainland life.

Chomsky "Looks like Hawaii could use some wind turbines"

Or some solar cells. While the cost of generating electricity averages about $0.03 per KWH for fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil), it's about $0.38 per KWH for solar - more than 10 times as much. That's fairly close to the $0.28 per KWH for Hawaii. Maybe they DO generate much of their electricity from solar, which would help explain why their energy costs are about triple what other states pay.

But it's 'green', so they can 'feel good' while their bank account is drained.

This article is an outright lie.

Click the link to document, the article makes it look like Texas is the 5th highest, that is so wrong, even from the document the first 10 states listed are higher than Texas.

Ms Linn do you ever check your facts or do you subscribe to the UK's New of the World type journalism "print anything that sells newsprint"

ROY WILSON-336103

Chomsky "Looks like Hawaii could use some wind turbines"

Or some solar cells. While the cost of generating electricity averages about $0.03 per KWH for fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil), it's about $0.38 per KWH for solar - more than 10 times as much. That's fairly close to the $0.28 per KWH for Hawaii. Maybe they DO generate much of their electricity from solar, which would help explain why their energy costs are about triple what other states pay.

But it's 'green', so they can 'feel good' while their bank account is drained.

Roy---I live it and what you are saying is nonsense. I haven't used a back up generator for years--no need for heat or A/C. Why is the poverty level so much higher on the mainland? People here are happier, families are closer, elders are respected, and we live longer, healthier lives. What folks do on the mainland is mainland business. What we do in Hawaii is our business.

The attached PDF has different figures than the article, Maine should be on the list not Conn.

Phil-673730

This article is an outright lie.

Click the link to document, the article makes it look like Texas is the 5th highest, that is so wrong, even from the document the first 10 states listed are higher than Texas.

It's not really an outright lie, it just uses the figures in a slippery way. To me, the state with the highest cost of electricity would be the one whose RATE is the highest (cents per kW/hr). This chart is using the average bill, which is odd because we all have control over our usage (to varying degrees).

For instance, look at Alabama. Their rate is really not too bad, just over 10 cents. But goodness, those folks waste electricity, don't they?? Look at the average usage! So sure their bills are high. They leave their A/C on 67 F all day long. I think a more honest list would rank the states by the average rate people pay, not their total bill.

You can't just use the rate though, that won't tell the whole story. I have a home in Montana, and use the air conditioner just a couple of weeks a year. I also have one in Vegas. Just running the air in Summer to keep the house from overheating (88 degrees) is nearly $150 a month.

Gas bills though? Montana in winter: $150 a month. Vegas? Around $40

I was typing when Allison posted. She explains it rather well.

Roy Wilson,

The people in Hawaii (like those on many island nations) pay high costs because they are importers of energy. The fossil fuel sources that you mentioned (coal, natural gas and oil) do not occur on the island, so the residents are forced to import which is very expensive. The recent wind farms will help in the long run, because they allow the Hawaiian people to harvest a locally occurring energy source instead of being reliant on fossil fuels imported from other places. Hawaii also has the opportunity to integrate geothermal since they are "blessed" with volcanic activity and eventually, to harness energy produced by the movement of the ocean water. I believe Hawaiians already generate around 8% of their energy from biomass from sugar plantations, but the vast majority of their power currently comes from oil imported from Alaska and the Asia-Pacific region making them very vulnerable to shortages and price increases. It is wonderful to see the Hawaiian people embrace renewables in all of their forms. I hope the adoption will lead to stronger local economies and less danger of the kind of major economic disruptions that accompany reliance on imported sources of energy.

@sandtrich - ROY WILSON-336103's statements may or may not be nonsense (for instance, he doesn't specify whether his costs include the economic costs of pollution), but your response refutes nothing in his post. What does respecting your elders have to do with energy costs in HI or the relative costs of solar energy and energy produced from fossil fuels?

LogicRules-01

@sandtrich - ROY WILSON-336103's statements may or may not be nonsense (for instance, he doesn't specify whether his costs include the economic costs of pollution), but your response refutes nothing in his post. What does respecting your elders have to do with energy costs in HI or the relative costs of solar energy and energy produced from fossil fuels?

I did get off topic, so here it is on topic---The start up with any type of energy, (whether it be fossil, nuclear or clean) has a cost. With a solar intensity of 9.9 on a scale of 10, the return on solar is quite fast. My entire system was paid for in <2 years.

I also lived on 71 acres where the energy for 3 houses came from a year around stream with the slope of the land, the water was piped down to a clean turbine and returned to the stream as clean water. For the 3 houses, over 4 years, we never used any more than 30% of the available output. Total cost was $3500 plus sweat. It's still running and kicking ass.

As long as everyone spreads lies about renewable energy, there will no understanding.

sandtrich

That's great but you can't really believe that we can all live in an area of 9.9 solar intensity. Don't get me wrong I'm for solar power but until the collection efficiency increases people under a cloudy sky will still need to rely upon incoming power.

MV-skeptic

sandtrich

That's great but you can't really believe that we can all live in an area of 9.9 solar intensity. Don't get me wrong I'm for solar power but until the collection efficiency increases people under a cloudy sky will still need to rely upon incoming power.

MV--Please refer to bestplaces.net and enter Pahoa, HI in the city field. Click climate and/per their data and our proximity to the equator---poof. I don't know what their crIteria is for comparison but they're not for or against anything--just raw data. In spite of the fact that we we receive almost 150" of rain a year, there is rarely a day that we don't have an abundance of sun. We use water catchment tanks, so that's never a shortage either.

I start the generator once a month to make sure it still works, but that's it.

Here is the thing at my house. My electric and gas bill added together equal an average of $150/month for my 1100 sq ft home. In the summer my electric bill goes up and my gas bill goes down. In the winter my gas bill climbs and my electric bill drops. I also have a tendency to keep my house rather cool year around.

OMG!!! In Virginia we have a MONOPOLY called Dominion Virginia Power. The average heating bill in the winter (keeping the house at 68 degrees) is $400.00 and summer bills at 74 degrees is $275.00.

Our family and friends have even higher bills than we do. I don't see how some pay these outrageous charges...FOR SHAME!!!

WE NEED AN INVESTIGATION!!!

Thank you Allison for responding, as is said elsewhere statistics are slippery.

The Big Island does have geothermal and we have for many years, but unfortunately, the electric company sends most of that power to Oahu instead of using it locally and their power cost is much lower than ours. Their excuse is that" they seem to lose too much power sending electricity from one side of the island to the other".. Although they have plants on both sides, so their argument doesn't hold up. The reason Hawaii has the highest electric rates is because HECO/HELCO which ever you want to call it makes huge profits and the PUC has no balls.

It would be nice if these figures included the companies profile, Public, private or community or co-op owned. Our public utility was sold off years ago and since then our rates have sky rocketed. Greedy Profiteering on basic necessities is going to destroy us all.

IN the news the other day they said the average Hawaii bill was $260 a month not $168. In California in 1985-1995 we payed almost $300-$400 a month in power in three different houses. I live in AZ highest was $67 in August. And when I was in Maryland it was 70 a month on average and in GA it was about 100-110 a month

I've learned not to expect honesty, integrity in journalism...so I'm not surprised...but a more honest way to display this data would have been in relation to median income...because let's face it a $200 electric bill in Connecticut or Maryland or Hawaii is not the same thing as a $200 bill in Alabama or Arizona

I question the numbers in the "full list" pdf table - according to those, the average monthly consumption is 1,065 in Indiana and only 799 in Illinois. The climates are very similar. Does this mean that Indiana has more all-electric houses, or more electrical appliances on the average? Are the houses in Illinois newer or better insulated or smaller? Are the Illinois residents impoverished, and unable to afford air conditioning? Maybe it's all the electric cars the Hoosiers are charging each night (ha.)

A 33% difference in consumption for the average consumer is not credible.

Greg, I agree with that to a certain degree. My town (In MA) has it's own power and our rates are higher than Nat'l Grid which powers most of the state. And while that is true, it's also true that our power is more constant during times of bad weather. If there's a power outage it's hours not days or weeks before it's back on. I'll pay for that.

You are so wrong. The REA's purchase their electricity from generation coops, which often also sell to cities and towns. There is far less money to be made from rural areas and REA's were started for rural farmers and ranchers that the city municipals did not want to serve. You can have very long line extensions with only one customer and then have to maintain those long lines. The reason you can get cheap rates in the cities is because they have a lot less consumers per mile and their costs would have to go up if they served the outlying areas. Please know your facts before you post comments.

PT is right. Densely populated areas are the money makers. The sparse rural areas are generally a loss.

@charlie-295522 - complaining is easy. What you, like most complainers in CT, don't seem to realize is that if CL&P and UI had to have the resources to more "carefully" (I'm not sure what you mean by "careless" but I'll go with your terminology) respond to events like Irene and the freak October snowstorm, CT electricity rates would likely have been even higher all along. Or were you under the illusion that preparedness is free? No, I'm in no way affiliated with CL&P or UI.

LogicRules...

CT already has the second highest rates in the nation behind only Hawaii. If we are not as prepared as other states were for the storms then why exactly are our rates so high?

@scarletfire - I'd like to see some data to support the premise behind your question. Can you demonstrate that other states are better prepared? What other state suffered 80%+ outages over a majority of its area after the October snowstorm? And if memory serves correctly the utilities in e.g. NY and NJ came under just as much fire as CL&P after Irene.

The one-two punch of Irene and the Snow really crushed CT. Localities with laws that power couldn't be turned on until all lines were up and all trees out of the road didn't help either.

Maybe we do need to pay more if we want to avoid long outages. I don't. I have a generator. I'll take longer outages and lower delivery charges please.

Annie: Sounds like you need more insulation, or keep your thermostat at a decent level. There is no way your bill should be 272 for a month.

I live in Texas and the rate is .11 cents a KWh and AC runs 24 hours a day here in the summer and my bill is no where near that price.

my AC bill in texas this summer was $500/month...

I was going to say, my bill for a 2 bedroom apartment was about 250 this summer, and that was with the AC at the hottest tolerable setting. I wouldn't have been able to afford running it 24 hours a day.

With Texas being up inn the mid 105 range day after day why would you not expect a huge electric bill?

I was thinking about that, too. The article says something about higher electric bills coming, but that assumes people are using electric heat. The only places I know where they use electric heat are places where it doesn't get very cold very often.

I will say that I used to have an electric heat pump, so my bills were fairly flat - high all year! I HATE heat pumps. Feels like you have the AC on all winter, which you actually DO (it's just running backwards).

Mark308887, I have a friend in Houston. He laughs at my snow in MA, and I laugh at his 500/mo AC bills.

It's not just the electric heat, but the cost of running the furnace for your Natural gas or oil burner. Those things can suck up alot of electricity, especially an older one. I am very frugal, but my electric bill close to doubles when the furnace is on 24/7.

A lot of northern houses built in the 1970's and early 1980's were built with electric heat. Most of the businesses around here (Northern wisconsin) will have gas heaters to do their main heat, but electric heaters everywhere to handle cold spots such as bathrooms.

Natural gas heating REQUIRES electricity, for blowers, thermostat controls, igniters. When the power goes out, gas furnaces shut down as well.

Usually commercial rates are higher than the residential rate, unless you are a major manufacturing facility and can negotiate a "special" bulk rate.....as you noted, at the expense of all of the other customers. Here in the US Virgin Islands, where we can't tap into any grid system and our power is generated from diesel fuel, the residential rate is 42.1¢/kwh and the commercial rate is 49.9¢/kwh.

thanks.

Hi anti-trust proponent. Small nit, but Virgin Islands power from WAPA is based on 6 oil, not diesel.

Well you missed the point. This is not about cost of electricity.

Really?

Who pays most for electricity?
Your home electric bill varies widely depending on where you live.

Sure sounds like they're talking about the cost of electricity to me. . . Especially when one of the columns in their table is "Average Retail Price" (of electricity). Are you saying that what you pay for electricity is unrelated to the price?

Here in CT we suck it up and run the AC only a few weeks a year. It's the heating costs that get you.

Sean: I'll bet! But, I will say that you can always burn wood fairly cheap (free, if you have a few acres or the ability to cut and haul timber yourself) to keep warm. Sadly, there's no substitute for AC.

Although one guy on here mentioned something about nat-gas air conditioners - which I'd never heard of.

See my post at #10.1. MOST businesses in most places do NOT get "wholesale" prices for their electricity, only the extremely large users (manufacturing facilities) and other utility companies (REA buying from Ohio Power, XYZ buying from ABC through the grid system, etc.) get to negotiate for a "wholesale" rate.

It is not just people in apartments who "get screwed". Anyone who uses less than the minimum can end up paying a higher rate per kwh than other residential customers. Please show us proof of your claim that the wealthy claim their dwellings as a business and get a special rate. Anyone can claim their residence as a business, but only for tax purposes, not for any special electric or other utility rate and their residence sure wouldn't qualify in many cases for any kind of a "wholesale discount" rate.

what sort of proof do you want or expect?

you don't have any proof to the contrary or know that the place i live in now use to have whole sale electricity rates.

because i have first hand experience with knowing that "whole sale" prices are provided to living dwellings registered as business's, i stand by my comment.

You use AC in the Columbia Valley????! When would it ever kick on?

When it reaches 100-plus degrees for much of the summer. Eastern Washington is essentially desert with huge temperature extremes, unlike western Washington which is temperate Pacific.

If I build a "next house" it will definitely have a radiant heat barrier.

The service fees on my natural gas account here in Georgia are a problem. Natural gas prices have been on a steady decline with [what I believe to be happening] the economic slowdown and new gas supplies becoming available in Texas, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. However, despite prices moving down to $0.60 per therm, the regulated service fee is somewhere between $25-30 per month for a 4800 sq ft residence. Add in gas and the monthly tab ranges from $40 to $230.

Electricity in Georgia on my place hits $500 for four months and troughs at $120.

I've heard of gas refrigerators but never heard of a gas AC system. I'd love to have one of those - but I seriously doubt it would be affordable.

@ justice fleeting, nice point, but what about taxes and delivery charges? New York has a good deal of hydropower yet it has one of the higest rates in the nation, on average, given what appears to be very high taxes on electricity distribution, and generally very high rates on the distribution network. New York actually has the third highest retail price, according to the chart in this article. This can't be good for what remains of the manufacturing industry in New York.

Could be any number of things. Do you have a heat pump? Those things run (on electricity) year-round. Could be your windows. Could be lack of insulation. Could be very subtle energy consumers adding up - flat screen TV left on all day, computers powered up 24/7, battery chargers, home theatre system, lights left on when not needed. . . Lots of things use small amounts of electricity even when they aren't "ON;" plug them into power strips and switch them off completely when not in use. Could just be that you need to consider expanding your personal comfort range - or buy a snuggie for the winter months.

Who is your provider? I live near Waco TX, and would like a lower electric bill.

How can you shop around for electricity? Power companies don't share the same distribution lines outside of the master grid system from what I ever experienced in Ohio, nor does any other "hard-wired" utility (phone, cable, etc.). The only utility that you can really shop around for is wireless (cell phones, satellite, broadband.) I'd like to know what kind of "de-regulation" rules were set in your part of Texas that requires utility companies to compete over the same transmission lines (who owns the lines and who is responsible for repairs, etc.) The only way to shop for electricity is for some of the competition now arising from solar companies offering lease programs for their systems (like Google Power where they install the system on your house, then charge you a usage rate.)

Utilities have state as well as federal regulations. The states control the regulations related to the retail sale of power.

Some states choose a deregulation scheme that works like this:

An entity is created that owns the transmission facilities and is in charge of distribution. This is highly regulated. Then, providers (natural gas, electric) supply input to cover the demand of their consumers.

Consumers pay a bill that either has two charges, one from the distributor and one from the supplier, or they pay a bill from the supplier that has the distributor's costs already included in the amount.

The suppliers are able to compete on price and earn customers by offering the best deal. Since the product is pretty much a pure commodity, the suppliers compete on price. The suppliers have some regulation, but they have more freedom and can be more aggressive with pricing.

I'm not exactly sure how it works, but there likely is some kind of mechanism that ensures overall sufficient supply because the transmission facilities are shared. That is, if supplier A puts in 100 CCF of gas but supplier A's consumers use 200 CCF, there still is enough gas to go around.

It's probably a financial settlement mechanism and reserve storage capability. So, if the supplier is short, they're probably covered and have to buy gas from the "system". Suppliers do have to be qualified and approved by the state, which also probably means that there has to be some kind of bond or surety to make sure no fly-by-night suppliers enter the market who can't consistently supply the gas/electricity their consumers consume. That kind of situation would risk having outages...

With shared facilities there's going to be a monopoly somewhere. The key is to make an efficient distributions system, manage it well, and regulate it effectively.

How are you paying 35.2209? I live on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and my bills have been 44 to 45 cents per kwh for months.... It's ridiculous.