Los Alamos County switches residential power bills to time-of-use pricing

Los Alamos County will begin billing residential electric customers under time-of-use pricing on July 1, and the first changes will show up on August bills. The new setup means a household’s power bill will depend not only on how much electricity it uses, but also on when it uses it and, for customers on automated meters, the single highest hour of use in the billing cycle.

The evening on-peak period runs from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. at 19.70 cents per kilowatt-hour. Off-peak electricity, from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., will cost 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. Under those rates, a home that uses 500 kilowatt-hours entirely off-peak would pay $55 for energy, while the same 500 kilowatt-hours used during the evening peak would cost $98.50 before any demand charge is added.

The demand charge is set at $1 per kilowatt during the highest hour of use in the billing cycle, separate from the time-of-use energy rate. A household that hits a 4-kilowatt peak hour would owe an additional $4 for demand. Los Alamos County cannot measure that component without an automated meter infrastructure, so customers who are not enrolled in AMI will not be placed on the new demand structure.

Those customers will instead be billed at the Residential 6C rate of 19.70 cents per kilowatt-hour at all hours. All other electric customers will see new rates beginning July 1, but the time-of-use and demand pieces apply only to residential accounts. Households that can move laundry, dishwashing, water heating, or electric vehicle charging out of the 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. window and avoid sharp hour-long spikes are the ones most likely to pay less.

Homes that rely heavily on evening power use, or that run several appliances at once during the highest-use hour, are the ones most exposed to higher bills under the new structure.