Matanuska Electric Assn Inc electricity rates

It serves 64,205 residential customers in Alaska. At 23.37¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Alaska, 17.2% under the statewide average of 28.23¢.

Its customers use very little electricity by national standards, 606 kilowatt-hours a month against 871 nationally. Dense housing, a mild climate or heating that runs on gas rather than electricity all push consumption down, and any of them can leave a household with a modest bill despite a high rate.

Owned by the customers it serves, with directors elected by members. Co-ops are frequently outside state rate regulation. That matters because a bill is not only the cost of generating electricity: it also carries the cost of the network, and who owns that network changes how it is paid for.

In 2024 the average Matanuska Electric Assn Inc customer went 258 minutes without electricity across 2.35 interruptions. The median across the 941 utilities that report this is 185 minutes.

That is worse than typical. Overhead lines through wooded or storm-exposed terrain are the usual explanation, and the fix is vegetation management and circuit automation, both of which are recovered through rates.

Matanuska Electric Assn Inc offers time-of-use pricing to residential customers. 28 households were enrolled, about 0.1% of its residential base.

These plans are opt-in almost everywhere. They reward households that can move laundry, dishwashing, water heating or electric vehicle charging out of the late-afternoon peak, and they cost more than the standard rate for households that cannot. How to tell which group you are in.

453 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 2.73 megawatts. That works out to 7.1 installations per thousand customers, against a median of 8 across the utilities reporting it.

Adoption is below the national median. A low retail rate reduces what solar displaces, and export compensation set at avoided cost rather than the retail rate reduces it further. What exports are actually worth.