City Light rates are more affordable compared to many cities in the country because we're a public, not-for-profit utility and we primarily rely on low-cost, renewable, carbon-free hydroelectricity. We focus on providing stable, predictable rates that allow us to deliver sustainable, reliable, and affordable service.
Your bill charges include:
- Base Service Charge: This is a charge you are billed regardless of your energy usage to cover costs associated with billing and customer service operations.
- Energy Charge: The portion of your bill based on the energy or kilowatt‐hours (kWh) consumed during the billing period. All kwh are charged the same rate. This is a change from 2024 rates where your rate increased after a certain amount of energy use.
Helpful Definitions
- Watt: a measurement of the rate of electricity use, the most common unit of measurement is 1,000 watts, or 1 kilowatt (kW)
- Kilowatt‐hour (kWh): a measure of the flow of electricity over an hour – 10, 100‐watt lights on for 1 hour = 1 kWh
Current Residential Rates
| Rate Type | Seattle | Burien, SeaTac, Shoreline, Uninc. King County |
Lake Forest Park | Normandy Park | Tukwila | Renton |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base service charge per day | $0.3077 | $0.3323 | $0.3324 | $0.3273 | $0.3294 | $0.3077 |
| Energy per kWh | $0.1375 | $0.1485 | $0.1486 | $0.1463 | $0.1472 | $0.1375 |
Residential Undergrounding Rates
Burien and Shoreline elected to underground distribution lines on some of their arterial streets. Instead of the jurisdiction paying for the work upfront, the undergrounding cost is recovered from all customers in that jurisdiction via a kWh undergrounding charge according to the table below:
| Burien Undergrounding Rates | |
|---|---|
| First Ave South 1 per kWh | $0.0037 |
| First Ave South 2 per kWh | $0.0013 |
| Shoreline Undergrounding Rates | |
|---|---|
| North City per kWh | $0.0007 |
| Aurora 1 per kWh | $0.0017 |
| Aurora 2 per kWh | $0.0018 |
| Aurora 3A per kWh | $0.0005 |
| Aurora 3B per kWh | $0.0022 |
What Your Rate Covers
We provide you electricity, but the rate you pay also covers:
- Electricity production from City Light-owned dams
- Efforts to keep supply and demand in balance (because electricity is difficult to store)
- Delivery of energy to your home
- Customer services like billing, call-center support, and outage management
- Community benefits such as environmental programs and the low-income Utility Discount Program (UDP) that provides a 60% discount to help our neighbors who need a little extra help
The average rate you pay is about 14 cents per kWh and this is where it goes:
