Isle electrical bills decreasing

Dropping oil prices continue to pull down electrical bills in Hawaii, with Oahu’s typical customer paying 4 percent less in March than February.

The bill for a typical household using 600 kilowatt-hours on Oahu will be $170.25 in March, down $7.20 from February, according to Hawaiian Electric Co., the state’s largest utility provider with service to Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island. The price per kilowatt-hour dropped to 26.7 cents this month, down from 27.9 cents in February.

The lower bills are due to the falling price of fuel, said Darren Pai, HECO spokes­man.

"The decreases are all attributed to lower costs for fuel and purchased power," Pai said.

Along with the decreasing prices at fuel-powered plants, the utility lowered the price it pays for power from renewable generation sites such as wind farms.

The decrease follows a $9.77 drop in bills in February from January.

March marks the lowest electrical rate Oahu customers have paid since February 2011, when the rate was 26.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for a typical bill of $167.47.

Makiki resident Leandra Medina, 31, said she was surprised by how much of a decline she saw, citing a cut of $10 to $30 on her monthly electrical bills since the beginning of the year.

"We were vey excited about that," Medina said. "We were already limiting our usage. I was only expecting it to go down because I wasn’t using air conditioning as much, but not to the point that we saw."

March’s typical bill is 21.9 percent less than in August, when the bill was $218.18 and 34.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.

It was in August when HECO submitted its long-range plan for the state’s energy future, which includes a goal of cutting bills by 20 percent over the next 15 years.

Despite the current benefits customers are seeing from the falling oil prices, HECO is still set on cutting its use of oil.

The utility is committed to lowering its prices for customers in a sustainable way, Pai said.

Hawaii has the highest electrical rates in the nation, in part because it depends on imported oil for most of its power. Other states use natural gas, hydro­electric power or nuclear power to keep costs low.

The latest figures provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that Hawaii’s price of electricity is still almost three times the national average.

Hawaii residents paid an average of 34.59 cents a kilowatt-hour in December, while the national average was 12.15 cents.

HECO gets the majority of its energy mix from oil imported mainly from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The price of oil has fallen by more than half in the past six months.

On Tuesday the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude closed at $42.50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

HECO customers on the neighbor islands will also see a benefit from current fuel prices in February. Maui Electric Co. customers using 600 kilowatt-hours of electricity will see a $20.82 drop in their bill from last month. Maui customers will pay an average of $177.96, down from $198.78 in February. Hawaii Electric Light Co.’s residential rate on Hawaii island decreased to 32.8 cents a kilowatt-hour from 33.8 cents in February. The bill for a household using 600 kilowatt-hours of electricity is $208.85, down from $214.71.

The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative raised its rate to 32.9 cents a kilowatt-hour from 30.8 cents in February. The bill for a household using 600 kilowatt-hours of electricity, including a $10.58 customer base charge, is $207.98, up from $195.38.

Average monthly usage varies by island, but the 600-kilowatt-hour number is used to make comparisons. Monthly bills include the cost for kilowatt-hours used plus various other charges.