Why Price County Pays More for Water and Electricity Than Almost Anywhere in Wisconsin

TL;DR: Price County residents pay 27% more for electricity than the Wisconsin average and 33% more than the national average. A paper mill closure sent Park Falls water rates up 74% in 2022. Meanwhile, people on Facebook are posting bills that doubled or tripled without any change in usage. Here’s what’s actually going on.

Cheryl Elmore keeps her thermostat at 72 degrees. She hasn’t changed a single thing about how she uses electricity. But her bill went from $200 to $400 to over $500 in the span of a few months.

“I’m so sad for the people that struggle to pay these bills,” she wrote on Facebook last week. “There’s literally no aid for many of the working class, very little for the elderly and disabled.”

She’s not alone. Across Price County, residents are posting utility bills that make no sense to them. Brian LaBerge’s electric bill went from $170 to $243 to $370 in three months. Deborah Mayes Stump saw hers double from $200 to $400. Candace Beine shared two Price Electric Cooperative bills totaling $385 and $440 with a full rate breakdown that most residents can’t even parse.

Something is wrong, and nobody seems to have a clear answer.

The Two-Utility Problem

Price County is split between two electric providers, and which one you get depends entirely on where you live. There’s no choosing. No competition. Your address determines your rate.

Xcel Energy (operating as Northern States Power) serves the denser areas around Park Falls and Phillips with about 11,087 county customers. Their residential rate is 15.65 cents per kilowatt-hour. Price Electric Cooperative, a member-owned cooperative headquartered in Phillips, serves the rural stretches with about 6,120 customers. Their rate is 23.31 cents per kWh.

That’s a 49% difference for people living in the same county.

The cooperative charges more because it has to. Rural electric cooperatives serve low-density territories where power lines stretch for miles between handfuls of customers. Every mile of line, every pole, every transformer costs the same to maintain whether it serves 50 homes or 5. Price Electric buys its wholesale power from Dairyland Power Cooperative, which passes along generation and transmission costs through a Power Cost Adjustment (PCA) that shows up as a variable line item on every bill.

That PCA is what catches people off guard. Candace Beine’s April bill showed PCA charges of $20.15 and $23.94 added on top of base energy charges. L.C. Thomas noted on Facebook that the PCA increased by $9.81 per 1,000 kWh effective May 1, 2026, with the monthly access charge jumping from $14.70. The base rate didn’t change. The bill did.

“Nothing has changed in the household,” Thomas wrote. “My thermostat stays on 73. I’m so sick of these leeches.”

Xcel Customers Aren’t Happy Either

If you’re on Xcel Energy, you pay less per kWh. But Xcel just got approval from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for a 20% residential rate increase spread over 2026 and 2027. A typical residential bill goes up about $13 per month in year one and $25 cumulatively by year two.

That increase funds grid modernization and infrastructure reliability. It’s the kind of explanation that sounds reasonable in a press release and feels completely different when it shows up on your bill.

For some Xcel customers, the problems go beyond rates. Joe Sara Garcia posted that Xcel pulled $381.53 from her account twice and told her a refund check would take two weeks. “Joe’s appointments for the next two weeks have to be canceled because we have no gas money,” she wrote. In a separate incident in January, she says Xcel showed up at 5 AM to replace her electrical panel while her husband was on dialysis, without calling or knocking first. She’s looking for a lawyer.

Kailee Rae says Xcel installed a smart meter she had specifically opted out of and paid extra to avoid. When she called to complain, she was told it would cost $40 to address.

These are individual complaints, not statistical trends. But they add up to a pattern of a utility that feels unaccountable to the people paying for it.

The Paper Mill Still Haunts Park Falls Water Bills

Electricity is half the story. Water is the other half, and for Park Falls, the story starts with the paper mill.

The Park Falls paper mill was the city’s largest water customer for decades. When it closed, the water utility lost a massive chunk of revenue. The infrastructure, the treatment plant, the pipes, the pumping stations, all of it still had to be maintained. The fixed costs didn’t shrink just because the mill stopped paying.

In 2022, the city requested a 98% water rate increase from the PSC. The PSC approved 74.33%. For the average residential customer, that meant roughly $75 more per quarter.

The blame game that followed was ugly. Mayor Michael Bablick initially suggested the PSC had proposed the 98% increase. PSC External Affairs Director Matt Sweeney pushed back publicly: “Park Falls city and water utility asked to raise their rates by 98 percent. That wasn’t something that we came to them with.”

The city issued a rebuttal noting that multiple state agencies, including the DNR, Department of Revenue, and WEDC, had pressured them to conduct a rate study to stay eligible for grants and loans. In other words, the state told them to raise rates or lose funding.

Now Park Falls files annual simplified rate cases with the PSC, small annual increases (the most recent was about 7%), to avoid another shock. The 2025 budget included higher-than-expected phosphorus removal chemical costs for wastewater treatment. The city’s refuse fee also jumped from $45 to $54.96 per quarter, a 22% increase that shows up on the same bill.

One silver lining: Park Falls water is PFAS free. While Wausau’s annual water bills went from $229 to $448 building PFAS treatment systems, Price County’s water supply doesn’t carry that burden. Yet.

Why Rural Counties Pay More

The structural reasons behind Price County’s utility costs aren’t mysterious. They’re the same reasons rural communities everywhere struggle with infrastructure costs.

Price County does have some local generation — more than most people realize, but still not nearly enough. The Flambeau River corridor hosts three small hydroelectric dams: Pixley Dam (0.96 MW, built 1918, owned by Flambeau Hydro LLC), Flambeau Lower Project (1.2 MW, 3 generators, operational since 1923), and Crowley Rapids (1.5 MW, 2 units, since 1930). On the solar side, Price Electric Cooperative has been investing aggressively: the 2.5 MW Flambeau Solar Project (built 2017, 22 acres, partnership with Dairyland Power and NorthStar Clean Energy), the 1.4 MW Ogema Solar Array (unveiled 2024, 10-acre site), and a 100 kW bifacial array at their Phillips headquarters. The Flambeau River Papers mill also operates its own cogeneration. Combined, that’s roughly 8 MW of nameplate capacity — enough to power perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 homes. Price County has roughly 14,000 residents spread across more than 1,200 square miles.

So yes, despite Price Electric’s growing solar investments, the majority of Price County’s electricity is still imported from the broader MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) grid, and those transmission costs are baked into every bill. The 18.96 MW Flambeau Hydro Station, the largest dam in the immediate area, sits just over the line in Rusk County — close geographically, but its power flows into Dairyland Cooperative’s wholesale mix, not directly into Price County homes.

The real cost drivers are structural: the county’s population of about 14,000 is stagnant or declining, meaning fixed infrastructure costs get spread over fewer people each year. Price Electric Cooperative serves roughly 5 meters per mile of line — compared to 50 or more in urban areas — so every pole, transformer, and mile of wire costs more per customer to maintain. The service area is heavily forested, requiring more vegetation management and storm response per mile of line. And Price Electric buys its wholesale power from Dairyland Power Cooperative, which passes along fluctuating fuel and market costs through a Power Cost Adjustment (PCA) that can swing by several cents per kWh with no change in the base rate.

At the state level, the Wisconsin PSC has approved more than $2 billion in rate increases since 2019. Xcel and Alliant Energy alone got $304.5 million in combined increases for 2026-2027. State Senator Patrick Testin, in a public Facebook post, blamed Governor Evers’ PSC appointees: “Wisconsin has had it with these continual increases, but with Gov. Evers’ PSC in control, it appears that there is no end in sight.”

Whether you blame the utilities, the PSC, or the structural reality of rural infrastructure, the result is the same: Price County residents are paying more, and many of them can’t afford it.

What Residents Can Actually Do

The options aren’t great, but they exist.

If you’re on Price Electric Cooperative: Look into the dual fuel load management program, which offers reduced rates for electric heat with a load control receiver. The cooperative offers net metering if you’re considering solar. Check your PCA on every bill and compare it month to month so you understand what you’re actually paying.

If you’re on Xcel Energy: Ask about budget billing to smooth out seasonal spikes. Brian LaBerge discovered that switching from a day/night rate to a flat rate cut his bill by more than half after his new meter was installed. Call and ask specifically about rate options, the first representative he spoke to didn’t even know the difference.

If you’re struggling to pay: The Wisconsin Home Energy Assistance Program (WHEAP) provides assistance to low-income households. Price County residents can apply through the Price County Human Services Department. Energy assistance is also available through the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

If you want to be heard: The PSC holds public hearings before approving major rate increases. You can submit written comments or testify in person. The last round of Xcel rate hearings in September 2025 included testimony from residents who said rate hikes were “unfairly burdening families who are trying to keep warm during the winter.”

The Bottom Line

Price County’s utility costs aren’t a mistake. They’re the product of rural geography, low customer density, wholesale power costs, aging infrastructure, industrial decline, and a regulatory system that keeps approving increases. The cooperative premium is real — 5 meters per mile means each customer pays more of the infrastructure. The paper mill’s shadow on water rates is real. The PCA increases are real — Dairyland’s wholesale power costs fluctuate with MISO market prices, and those swings pass straight through to Price Electric members. And yes, most of the county’s power is still imported, even with Price Electric investing in solar (the 1.4 MW Ogema array came online in 2024) alongside the existing hydro dams on the Flambeau. The people posting $500 electric bills on Facebook while their thermostat sits at 72 degrees all summer aren’t making it up.

Deborah Mayes Stump put it plainly: “I wish we had another company so there would be competition, then maybe we could get better rates. I would switch today.”

She can’t. And that is the most frustrating part of all.

By Price County Fun Editorial Team | Price County, Wisconsin

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