Intermountain Rural Elec Assn rate plans

What does Intermountain Rural Elec Assn's residential rate cost?

Intermountain Rural Elec Assn files a single residential tariff, so there is no plan to choose between — everyone served here is on the same terms. That makes this page short on comparison and long on one question instead: what does that tariff actually do to a bill?

Priced hour by hour across a full year, a small apartment on this tariff comes to about $739 and a three-bedroom house with central air to about $1,236 — an effective 15.2¢ and 13.1¢ per kilowatt-hour once the fixed charge is spread across everything used.

With one plan and no hourly pricing, the only lever left is using less. Moving laundry or car charging to the middle of the night changes nothing here, which is worth knowing before you rearrange your evenings for no reason.

Expect the bill to swing with the weather rather than with anything you decide: the same house costs around $137 in July and $82 in February. Budget against the higher figure and the summer bill stops being a surprise.

Making sense of the bill

• How to read your electric bill

  Four kinds of charge, only two of which you can do anything about.

• Fixed charges on your electric bill: what they are and why they matter

  The line that makes cents-per-kilowatt-hour comparisons quietly wrong.

• How to compare electricity plans without getting it wrong

  Six things that break a comparison, and the order to check them in.