Orcas Power & Light Coop rate plans

Estimates, not quotes. We run three made-up but realistic households through this tariff hour by hour for a full year — including the way air conditioning loads the afternoon and an EV loads the small hours. Your own bill depends on when you actually use electricity, which is exactly the thing a per-kWh number hides.

The hour of day does not change what you pay here — the month does. Running the same house through the full year, July costs about $208 and February about $141. That $68 swing is part rate and part weather, and it is the reason a budget built on your spring bill will break in July.

There is a usage cliff to watch. The first 5000 kWh each month are billed at 15.3¢; past that line the rate steps up to 17.6¢ — 15% more for every unit after. The last kilowatt-hour of a heavy month is the expensive one, which is why cutting a little off a big month saves more than cutting the same amount off a small one.

Before a single kilowatt-hour moves, this plan charges $720 a year in fixed fees. On the apartment above that is 52% of the whole bill; on the house with a car charging in it, 29%. Fixed charges are invisible in a cents-per-kWh comparison and they punish small users hardest — if you use very little electricity, the headline rate is the least important number on this page.