Average Electric Rates for Hawaiian Electric Co., Maui Electric Co. and Hawaii Electric Light Co.

How much does your electricity cost?

Rates are not the same for all categories of customers because the rates are based on the cost of serving each category. It costs more on a cost per kilowatt-hour basis to serve residential and small business customers than it does to serve business customers consuming large amounts of electricity.

The cost of electricity in Hawaii is higher than on the U.S. mainland for a number of reasons. The electrical systems on each island are independent. Unlike on the mainland, there are no neighboring utility companies from which to draw power in the event of a problem with the generation or distribution systems. That means we must have reserve generating capacity and multiple distribution routes.

But most of all, our use of oil as a principal source of fuel to produce electricity drives up costs. Mainland states primarily use other lower-cost resources such as coal, natural gas, or nuclear, which aren’t readily available or are also fossil fuels we do not want to pursue here. Because of our concern about volatile and rising oil costs, as well our responsibility for environmental protection and energy security, we are committed to increasing energy efficiency and conservation and to pursuing the use of more renewable energy resources.  

To help our customers understand the price of electricity, following is a chart that provides the average price paid in cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2009, by each category of customers. These average prices are significantly lower than the average prices in 2008, due to the lower price of fuel used to produce electricity.

Hawaiian Electric Company (island of Oahu)

Hawaii Electric Light Company (island of Hawaii)

Maui Electric Company (Maui County)

These figures are derived by dividing the total revenue by the total kWh sold for each category during the year.