The Potomac Edison Company electricity rates

It serves 135,266 residential customers in West Virginia. At 12.59¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in West Virginia, 25.1% under the statewide average of 16.80¢.

Consumption here is high, 1,213 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 shareholder-owned company whose rates are set by the state regulator, including an approved return on the capital it has invested. 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 The Potomac Edison Company customer went 275 minutes without electricity across 1.53 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.

1,056 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 9.51 megawatts. That works out to 7.8 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.