City of Ruston electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 9,900 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 5.66¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Louisiana, 60% under the statewide average of 14.15¢.

Consumption is close to the national norm at 914 kilowatt-hours a month against 871, so the rate translates fairly directly into the bill.

Owned by the city it serves and governed by a local board rather than the state commission. No shareholder return is built into the rate. 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 City of Ruston customer went 207 minutes without electricity across 1.96 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.

16 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 0.28 megawatts. That works out to 1.6 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.