West River Electric Assn Inc electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 18,423 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. Its 14.25¢ per kilowatt-hour sits 9.4% below the South Dakota average of 15.73¢.

Consumption is close to the national norm at 897 kilowatt-hours a month against 871, so the rate translates fairly directly into the 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 West River Electric Assn Inc customer went 44 minutes without electricity across 0.53 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.

West River Electric Assn Inc offers time-of-use pricing to residential customers. 34 households were enrolled, about 0.2% 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.

135 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 1.03 megawatts. That works out to 7.3 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.