City of Crystal Falls electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 1,330 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 18.88¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Michigan, 14.2% under the statewide average of 22.01¢.

Its customers use very little electricity by national standards, 460 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 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.

City of Crystal Falls offers time-of-use pricing to residential customers. 1,330 households were enrolled, about 100% 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.

1 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 0 megawatts. That works out to 0.8 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.