Black Hills Colorado Electric, LLC electricity rates

It serves 89,252 residential customers in Colorado. Its 17.05¢ per kilowatt-hour runs 5.5% above the Colorado average of 16.16¢.

Its customers use very little electricity by national standards, 571 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.

A shareholder-owned company whose rates are set by the state regulator, including an approved return on the capital it has invested. 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 Black Hills Colorado Electric, LLC customer went 323 minutes without electricity across 2.39 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.

8,956 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 59.57 megawatts. That works out to 100.3 installations per thousand customers, against a median of 8 across the utilities reporting it.

Adoption here is exceptionally high. That usually means some combination of a high retail rate worth displacing, strong sunshine and favourable export rules, and it tends to bring its own regulatory argument about who covers the fixed cost of the network. What exports are actually worth.