This overview compares IaH PoCo's rates to peer island utilities and larger mainland providers, and breaks down where the money actually goes — both the per-kWh usage charge and the fixed monthly service fee. Our goal is to keep rates as low as possible while building the reserves we need to maintain our network. Once our new cable has been installed, we will turn our attention to improving our resilience through investments in solar and storage and potentially replacement of our generator.
It is easier to compare costs across utilities if you state everything as "all-in" on a per kWh basis. IaH PoCo’s cable connection to the mainland allows its all-in electric rate to compare favorably with Matinicus (in 2023) and Monhegan (2025), who both have historically relied on diesel generation. Matinicus has moved to 75% solar but will not materially reduce its rates until significant loan costs are behind them. Both Monhegan and Matinicus rely on significant town support. Fox Islands installed wind turbines and a cable to the mainland in 2009 — their scale and access to the mainland grid allows them to offer the lowest all-in costs among Maine island utilities. The chart shows that scale matters more than technology. Fox Island has 10x the Isle au Haut customer base, owns a wind farm, has a mainland cable, and still charges 38¢. There is no technology pathway that gets a 125 member co-op to mainland rates without external subsidies.
Our small scale is the fundamental driver of our high costs. Our power purchase costs include not only the green power we purchase on the open market but also the 5.3 cents per kWh we pay to Versant for transmission of our power. Our delivery charges are the costs to maintain our grid and our generator. Larger utilities are able to spread their cost over many more customers and kWh delivered. Our administrative costs are as much as 10 times greater than larger rural cooperatives on a per customer basis since they are spread across a small number of customers.
We have studied our costs and have plans to manage them in order to contribute to our reserves. We expect to be able to reduce the legal and audit fees by modernizing our accounting system. We have moved to an MPUC rate-approval system that should require fewer legal expenses. We hope these changes will allow us to build up our reserves.
In order to keep up with inflation and generate an operating reserve to fund unexpected and deferred maintenance issues, we hope to reduce our Cable and Grid losses by replacing all of our old meters with new ones. In the future, as solar prices continue to decline, we also hope to avoid some transmission costs paid to Versant. At the same time, given our current rates delivered over the cable, a solar investment will mainly increase our resilience. A solar/battery system with more advanced switching would free up resources currently used to manage mainland outages. In order to reduce our overall costs, a new system would have to deliver power at less than 15.8 cents per kWh.
