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Minnesota Valley Electric Coop

Minnesota Valley Electric Coop is a member-owned cooperative, serving 43,412 residential accounts in Minnesota. Everything below comes from its own 2024 filing with the US Energy Information Administration — the numbers the company reported about itself.

Average residential rate
$0.140/kWh

2024 annual average

Homes with solar
426

1.0% of residential accounts

Rooftop capacity
5 MW

residential, net-metered

What households here pay

Residential customers on Minnesota Valley Electric Coop's own supply paid an average of $0.140 per kWh across 2024 — total residential revenue divided by total residential kilowatt-hours sold, so it includes the fixed monthly charge, riders and fuel adjustments, not just the headline energy rate. It is the number your own bill would produce if you divided the annual total by the kWh.

Minnesota's statewide average was $0.175/kWh in June 2026 on EIA's monthly series. This utility's 2024 average ran about 20% below that. The two figures are measured differently and are two years apart, so read the gap as direction, not as a precise difference.

That made it the 6th cheapest of the 13 Minnesota utilities on this site in 2024.

What it did between 2020 and 2024

Minnesota Valley Electric Coop's all-in residential rate went from $0.118 in 2020 to $0.140 in 2024 — a rise of 18.4%. Each year is that year's own Form 861 filing, worked out the same way as the figure above.

Across the 505 utilities on this site the middle one moved up 15.7% over the same years, so Minnesota Valley Electric Coop moved with the pack. Rates rose almost everywhere in this window; the comparison is what says whether a number is unusual.

$0.118 2020
$0.118 2021
$0.136 2022
$0.126 2023
$0.140 2024

Residential revenue over residential sales, bundled service only, from each year's EIA Form 861.

How many neighbours already did it

426 homes on this system had a net-metered solar array at the end of 2024 — 9.8 per thousand residential accounts, or 1.0% of them. That is close to the median US utility on this site.

That ranks 5 of 13 Minnesota utilities reporting net-metered solar.

19 of those systems — 4% — also report a paired battery. Battery attach rates rise where exports earn less than retail, because storing a kilowatt-hour and using it later is worth more than selling it. Exports here still earn full retail, so the incentive to store is weaker.

Those systems sent 5,459 MWh back to the grid over the year — an average of 12,815 kWh exported per household.

The rule that decides this, and it changed

The 30% federal residential credit (§25D) expired for systems placed in service after 31 December 2025. Every payback figure written before 2026 — including anything quoted at you by an installer working from an old spreadsheet — is overstated by roughly a third for a purchase. Leases and PPAs still reach §48E until the end of 2027, which is why the ownership question now decides more than the hardware does.

Run the Minnesota numbers on 2026 rules →

Other Minnesota utilities

Utility Accounts Avg rate Solar per 1,000
Northern States Power Co - Minnesota 1,230,057 $0.170 10.9
Connexus Energy 134,095 $0.137 9.5
ALLETE, Inc. 125,896 $0.157 8.1
Dakota Electric Association 108,097 $0.140 14.3
East Central Energy 55,250 $0.169 11.1
Rochester Public Utilities 54,943 $0.179 11.2
Wright-Hennepin Coop Elec Assn 53,714 $0.146 6.1
Otter Tail Power Co 50,118 $0.113 1.4
Lake Country Power 47,204 $0.179 5.9
Crow Wing Cooperative Power & Light Comp 44,698 $0.133 3.3
Lake Region Electric Cooperative - (MN) 27,239 $0.133 3.8
Stearns Cooperative Elec Assn 26,138 $0.139 7.8

Where these numbers come from

US Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861, data year 2024 — the annual filing every US electric utility makes. Rates are residential revenue divided by residential sales on bundled service; solar counts are from the net-metering schedule of the same filing. Utility number 12651. Download the source archive and check any figure here against it.

Form 861 is annual and publishes roughly eleven months after the year it covers, so 2024 is the most recent utility-level data that exists anywhere. It is not today's tariff. For a current price, read your own bill; for a current rate structure, read the utility's tariff sheet. This page is for scale and comparison — what a typical household on this system pays, and how many of them have already installed solar.

Written and maintained by . Last reviewed 2026-08-19.