Alpena Power Co electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 13,763 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 17.43¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Michigan, 20.8% under the statewide average of 22.01¢.

Its customers use very little electricity by national standards, 527 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 Alpena Power Co customer went 284 minutes without electricity across 2.2 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.

12 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 0.11 megawatts. That works out to 0.9 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.