Are electric cooperatives cheaper?

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On average in the United States, residential customers of consumer-owned utilities have rates 13 percent cheaper than customers of investor-owned utilities, according to the American Public Power Association, a trade group for consumer-owned utilities.

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On average in the United States, residential customers of consumer-owned utilities have rates 13 percent cheaper than customers of investor-owned utilities, according to the American Public Power...

Distributed energy such as rooftop solar is becoming cheaper and more pervasive. Electric cooperatives, mostly dependent on coal for power, will face higher costs from the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan if they attempt to hew to the status quo. Assuming Ignorance (or Apathy)

They pooled their money, bought food staples in bulk, and resold them to member-owners at low prices. Today’s electric cooperatives in rural America operate similarly. They’re tax-exempt nonprofit businesses set up and owned by the consumers who benefit from the services provided.

—It's not an easy concept for consumers to understand, but for co-ops the reality is that while energy is often cheap, power is expensive. "Historically, we've bundled our cost into the kilowatt-hour component.

This means that you have the right to help determine where your co-op gets its energy from, how much your electric rates are, and what path your co-op takes to modernize and adopt cheaper and cleaner renewable energy. Co-ops provide electricity for predominantly rural areas, and typically purchase their power on energy markets, though a few co-ops ...

fiber deployments. Electric cooperatives utilize mostly aerial plant and already own their own poles and right-of-ways. They also have extensive experience in building outside plant infrastructure, including fiber. In many cases, deploying fiber in rural areas is actually cheaper

Third, Mountain Parks Electric had also recently seen prices for bids to build a solar project that the cooperative itself was considering, in collaboration with Rocky Mountain Institute’s Shine Program. Mountain Parks Electric General Manager Tom Sifers noted that those bids “got our eyes open that solar is here and you can buy it for 5 cents, and that’s cheaper than our wholesale rate, let alone our retail rate - it’s half of that.”