Kauai Island Utility Cooperative electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 30,109 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 41.29¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Hawaii, 20.6% under the statewide average of 52.00¢.

Its customers use very little electricity by national standards, 536 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 Kauai Island Utility Cooperative customer went 383 minutes without electricity across 4.39 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.

5,917 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 26.68 megawatts. That works out to 196.5 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.