Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 14,546 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 17.58¢ per kilowatt-hour it tracks the Minnesota average of 16.95¢ closely, which is what you would expect from a utility large enough to shape that average itself.

Consumption here is below the national norm at 699 kilowatt-hours a month against 871, which softens the effect of the rate on the final bill.

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 Mille Lacs Energy Cooperative customer went 237 minutes without electricity across 10.41 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.

59 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 0.93 megawatts. That works out to 4.1 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.