North Dakota Courts Large Energy Users
By: Michael Standaert, North Dakota News Cooperative | North Dakota Monitor
As an energy exporter blessed with abundant supply, North Dakota consistently ranks among the cheapest states in the country when it comes to residential, commercial and industrial electricity rates.
Exploding costs of transmission, the buildout and replacement of transmission infrastructure and the increase in energy load have helped push residential electricity prices modestly higher in recent years, however.
Average residential per kilowatt-hour of power increased by nearly 30 percent in the state between 2020 and 2024.
A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed that North Dakota actually had the largest decrease in average retail industrial and commercial electricity prices in the country over that span, with flat or slightly lower rates for residential users, when adjusted for inflation.
Most of the real cost rise is due to the increased expense of transmission as well as materials, buildouts, generation and transportation needed to keep up with energy demand and to replace aging systems.
Take transformers for example: they cost 70-100 percent more now than five years ago, according to International Energy Agency data. Aluminum and copper wiring is up to 50 percent more costly. Labor costs have also increased by around 20-40 percent.
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