Fitchburg Gas & Elec Light Co electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 6,168 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 40.08¢ per kilowatt-hour it is among the more expensive utilities in Massachusetts, 39.1% above the statewide average of 28.82¢.

Its customers use very little electricity by national standards, 504 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 Fitchburg Gas & Elec Light Co customer went 65 minutes without electricity across 1.05 interruptions. The median across the 941 utilities that report this is 185 minutes.

That is markedly better than typical. Short outage durations usually mean an underground or heavily automated network, and they are expensive to achieve, which is part of why reliable systems often carry higher delivery charges.

3,445 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 22.84 megawatts. That works out to 558.5 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.