Stearns Cooperative Elec Assn
Stearns Cooperative Elec Assn is a member-owned cooperative, serving 26,138 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
- $0.139/kWh
- Homes with solar
- 204
- Rooftop capacity
- 3 MW
2024 annual average
0.8% of residential accounts
residential, net-metered
What households here pay
Residential customers on Stearns Cooperative Elec Assn's own supply paid an average of $0.139 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 21% 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 5th cheapest of the 13 Minnesota utilities on this site in 2024.
What it did between 2020 and 2024
Stearns Cooperative Elec Assn's all-in residential rate went from $0.118 in 2020 to $0.139 in 2024 — a rise of 17.6%. 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 Stearns Cooperative Elec Assn moved with the pack. Rates rose almost everywhere in this window; the comparison is what says whether a number is unusual.
Residential revenue over residential sales, bundled service only, from each year's EIA Form 861.
How many neighbours already did it
204 homes on this system had a net-metered solar array at the end of 2024 — 7.8 per thousand residential accounts, or 0.8% of them. The median US utility on this site reports 12.1 per thousand, so uptake here is below average.
That ranks 8 of 13 Minnesota utilities reporting net-metered solar.
6 of those systems — 3% — 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 2,705 MWh back to the grid over the year — an average of 13,260 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.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 |
| Minnesota Valley Electric Coop | 43,412 | $0.140 | 9.8 |
| Lake Region Electric Cooperative - (MN) | 27,239 | $0.133 | 3.8 |
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 18019. 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 guarledes . Last reviewed 2026-08-19.