La Plata Electric Assn, Inc electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 39,931 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 16.71¢ per kilowatt-hour it tracks the Colorado average of 16.16¢ closely, which is what you would expect from a utility large enough to shape that average itself.

Consumption here is below the national norm at 661 kilowatt-hours a month against 871, which softens the effect of the rate on the final bill.

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 La Plata Electric Assn, Inc customer went 184 minutes without electricity across 1.44 interruptions. The median across the 941 utilities that report this is 185 minutes.

That is better than the typical American utility, though the figure includes major storm days and can move sharply from one year to the next.

La Plata Electric Assn, Inc offers time-of-use pricing to residential customers. 4,754 households were enrolled, about 11.9% 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.

2,735 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 17.75 megawatts. That works out to 68.5 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.