Northern Wasco County PUD electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 9,800 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 7.72¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Oregon, 52.6% under the statewide average of 16.27¢.

Consumption here is high, 1,236 kilowatt-hours a month against a national average of 871. Long cooling seasons, large detached homes and electric resistance heating are the usual causes, and together they matter more to the bill than the rate does.

A public body created by the state or county, governed by an elected or appointed board rather than by shareholders. 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 Northern Wasco County PUD customer went 35 minutes without electricity across 0.22 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.

32 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 0.23 megawatts. That works out to 3.3 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.