Watertown Municipal Utilities Electricity Rate per kWh (2024 EIA Data)
Municipal|EIA utility 20187|South Dakota|Bundled
In 2024, Watertown Municipal Utilities' residential customers paid an average of 9.30 cents per kWh: $11 million of revenue over 119,500 MWh of sales across 11,633 bundled residential customers, as reported to EIA on Form 861.
How the 9.30c figure is calculated
9.30c/kWh = $11,115k revenue / 119,500 MWh x 100. This is EIA's average realised price for 2024: everything Watertown Municipal Utilities billed its residential customers (energy, delivery, fuel and rider charges, fixed charges) divided by the kilowatt-hours it sold. It is not a tariff rate, and a 2024 annual average will differ from a current bill. For a 1,000 kWh month at this average, the energy cost works out to about $93 before taxes.
About Watertown Municipal Utilities' 2024 electricity prices
Watertown Municipal Utilities is a municipally owned electric utility that reports to the U.S. Energy Information Administration under utility number 20187. In 2024 it served 11,633 bundled residential customers in South Dakota, and its average realised residential price was 9.30 cents per kWh: $11 million of residential revenue divided by 119,500 MWh of residential sales.
Across the other sectors, Watertown Municipal Utilities' 2024 average prices were 8.58 cents for commercial customers (2,579 accounts) and 7.22 cents for industrial customers (96 accounts). Industrial customers paid 2.08 cents less per kWh than households, a 22% discount that is typical of high-volume, high-voltage service.
Within South Dakota, Watertown Municipal Utilities ranked number 7 of 21 utilities with bundled or delivery service by residential accounts served (11,633) and accounted for 2.31% of the state's residential electricity sales in 2024, measured in MWh sold or delivered rather than in customers. The state-wide average realised residential price in 2024, computed from the same EIA file, was 12.86 cents per kWh, so Watertown Municipal Utilities' customers paid 3.56 cents below the South Dakota average (-27.7%). For context, EIA's latest monthly figure for South Dakota is 15.36 cents per kWh (June 2026, Electric Power Monthly); that is a different, more recent measure across all utilities and is not directly comparable with a 2024 annual average.
EIA's service-territory file places Watertown Municipal Utilities in 1 South Dakota county: Codington. On the grid side it operates in the MRO NERC region and the Southwest Power Pool market, and reported distribution as its activities. Balancing authority code: SWPP.
EIA's preliminary 2025 early release (published 4 August 2026) shows a residential price of 9.29 cents per kWh for Watertown Municipal Utilities in South Dakota across 11,775 residential customers, 0.01 cents lower than the 2024 final figure. Early-release data has not been validated by EIA and must not be aggregated; the 2024 final figures remain the reference on this page until the 2025 final file is published.
The nearest other utilities in South Dakota by service-territory centroid are City of Brookings (SD) (45.3 miles away, 11.12 cents), City of Volga (SD) (45.3 miles away, 12.80 cents), Northern Electric Coop, Inc (62.7 miles away, 11.29 cents), City of Madison (SD) (64.9 miles away, 11.49 cents), and NorthWestern Energy (SD) (67.1 miles away, 12.56 cents).
| Sector | Customers | Sales (MWh) | Revenue ($k) | Avg c/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential | 11,633 | 119,500 | 11,115 | 9.30 |
| Commercial | 2,579 | 128,940 | 11,065 | 8.58 |
| Industrial | 96 | 141,558 | 10,216 | 7.22 |
Counties served in South Dakota (1)
From the EIA-861 Service Territory file; a listed county can be served in part only.
2025 early release (preliminary, not validated by EIA)
Residential price in South Dakota: 9.29c/kWh (-0.01c vs 2024 final), 11,775 residential customers; commercial 8.73c; industrial 7.56c. Published 4 August 2026. EIA marks this file "not fully edited, use with caution"; the 2024 final figures above remain the reference.
Nearby and comparable utilities in South Dakota
- EIA utility number
- 20187
- Ownership type
- Municipal
- Data year
- 2024 final (EIA-861)
- Primary state
- South Dakota
- Service type
- Bundled (Part A)
- Bundled residential customers (SD, price basis)
- 11,633
- Residential accounts served (SD)
- 11,633
- All accounts, all sectors (SD)
- 14,308
- Residential price, 2024
- 9.30 c/kWh
- Commercial price, 2024
- 8.58 c/kWh
- Industrial price, 2024
- 7.22 c/kWh
- Residential sales
- 119,500 MWh
- Residential revenue
- $11 million
- Rank in South Dakota by residential accounts served
- 7 of 21
- Share of South Dakota residential sales (MWh, not customers)
- 2.31%
- South Dakota average, 2024
- 12.86 c/kWh
- Counties served (SD)
- 1
- NERC region
- MRO
- RTO / ISO
- Southwest Power Pool
- Balancing authority
- SWPP
- Reported activities
- Distribution
- 2025 early release (preliminary)
- 9.29 c/kWh
- Change vs 2024 final
- -0.01 c/kWh
- Registry status
- Reported on Form EIA-861 for 2024
Realised price times usage; fixed charges are already inside the average. Bill calculator ->
Annual averages hide seasonal and tariff differences. Diagnose a high bill or model time-of-use pricing.
Bill Diagnostic ->Time-of-Use Guide ->Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861 Annual, 2024 final data (public domain), retrieved 28 August 2026; prices are average realised revenue per kWh, not tariffs. Final 2024 file f8612024.zip (released 3 December 2025) from the EIA-861 detailed data files. Preliminary 2025 figures come from the early-release file f8612025er.zip (4 August 2026), which EIA has not yet validated; they are labelled as such wherever shown and never mixed into a final figure.
Method: cents per kWh = revenue (thousand dollars) divided by sales (megawatthours), times 100. Customer counts, sales and revenue are the utility's own annual survey responses by state and sector. Bundled = energy plus delivery from one utility; delivery-only = the wires charge for customers who buy energy from a competitive supplier; energy-only = a competitive supplier's energy charge without delivery. County lists come from the EIA-861 Service Territory file; territory centroids used for "nearby utilities" are unweighted means of Census 2023 county centroids. EIA content is in the public domain (EIA copyright and reuse statement); the EIA logo is not used. Corrections: [email protected].