It’s now officially cheaper to subscribe to renewable energy through Northern States Power, a.k.a. Xcel Energy–Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. It’s not by much – only $2 on a recent $200 bill, but it puts to bed the argument that renewables aren’t cheaper. Let’s take a closer look.

We have two electric vehicles and aren’t (yet) subscribed to a EV charging plan. This is mostly because Xcel wants you to buy or rent their hardware and I wanted a particular type of charger. So we use more electricity than our neighbors, which according to Xcel use around 600kWh/month. We’re also subscribed 100% to renewables (solar and wind).

The way the Renewable Connect program works is you pay a higher rate for your electricity, but they refund you the fuel cost charge – which is for trains and trucks moving coal to the power plant. They print everything on your bill and credit them off so you can see what you’re saving. Below you can see a $54.75 fuel cost charge added and removed via a credit.

Then the cost of the renewables are added, $52.37 for this month, which is $2.38 less than the fuel cost. They even list it at the bottom so you know how much you’re saving.

We don’t have any rooftop solar (yet), so hopefully our usage will go down in the future. It’s all based in kWh, so these saving will still scale to whatever your electric bill is, so why not sign up today?

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