City of Richland electricity rates

It is a smaller system, serving 25,687 residential customers, which means its fixed costs are spread across a narrow base. At 9.82¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Washington, 34.3% under the statewide average of 14.95¢.

Consumption here is high, 1,244 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.

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.

In 2024 the average City of Richland customer went 94 minutes without electricity across 0.73 interruptions. The median across the 941 utilities that report this is 185 minutes.

That is better than the typical American utility, though the figure includes major storm days and can move sharply from one year to the next.

720 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 6.13 megawatts. That works out to 28 installations per thousand customers, against a median of 8 across the utilities reporting it.

Adoption is above the national median, which generally tracks the retail rate more closely than it tracks sunshine. What exports are actually worth.