Healdsburg's Electric Discount Now Grows With Every Kilowatt-Hour

Healdsburg electric bills have three parts: a fixed monthly customer charge, an energy charge for each kilowatt-hour, and state and local taxes. With the first billing cycle of November 2026, the fixed charge for a single-family home goes from $17.07 to $24.45. That is the last of the four steps the City Council adopted in 2023.

PG&E says most of its customers pay a Base Services Charge of about $24 a month. So for a buyer comparing a home in Healdsburg with one in Windsor or Santa Rosa, the fixed part of the electric bill is now about the same in both places. Healdsburg's price advantage is all in the per-kWh charge, so the savings grow with usage. A buyer only gets them if the address is served by Healdsburg Electric, and some Healdsburg addresses are not.

Start With Who Delivers the Power

Healdsburg owns and runs its own electric utility, and it sets its rates by council resolution. A Healdsburg mailing address doesn't mean the city provides the electricity. The Healdsburg 2030 General Plan environmental impact report, dated January 2009, said the city's Electric Department served the planning area except the Grove Street neighborhood and the Fitch Mountain area, which were served by PG&E.

This affects any comparison between homes. Fitch Mountain is one of the town's most distinctive residential areas, and a buyer there may get a PG&E bill even though the house feels like it's in Healdsburg. The quickest check is a year of the seller's utility bills, because the utility's name is printed at the top. Confirming service with the City of Healdsburg is better still, since the territory description is more than 15 years old.

What the November 2026 Step Changes

Resolution 72-2023 set four annual increases, each taking effect "with the November billing of each fiscal year." The D-1 standard residential rates and the D-4 all-electric rates were set at identical prices in every year.

Before the plan, the single-family charge was $6.38, as the Press Democrat reported in June 2023. Over four years it has nearly quadrupled, while the Tier 1 energy price rose about two cents. The city designed it this way. The June 5, 2023 staff report said increasing the monthly charge rather than the per-unit price "better recovers fixed costs that are independent of the amount of energy supplied." It also said this would mean a proportionally larger increase for the smallest users in each class.

Three Households, One Rate Change

These examples use the winter baseline in the city's posted schedule, 10.8 kWh per billing day for D-1 service, or about 324 kWh in a 30-day cycle at the Tier 1 price. Each bill compares the November 2025 rates with the November 2026 rates, before taxes.

• A light user at 300 kWh a month, all in Tier 1: about $68.13 rising to about $77.40, an increase of roughly 13.6 percent.
• A home at 484 kWh a month, the single-family average the city cited in 2023: about $120.77 rising to about $132.71, roughly 9.9 percent. Of that $11.94 increase, $7.38 is the higher fixed charge.
• A heavy user at 900 kWh a month: about $247.03 rising to about $265.50, roughly 7.5 percent.

The 484 kWh average comes from the Press Democrat's coverage of the 2023 vote. In percentage terms, the household that uses the least power gets the largest increase. A large house with an EV charger, a pool pump, or electric heat gets the smallest. For a relocating household, a home's future power bill depends more on how it uses energy than on the town it's in.

Where the Advantage Comes From

The comparison with PG&E is in the energy charge. PG&E's E-TOU-C tariff, effective March 1, 2026, listed bundled winter charges of $0.39757 per kWh at peak and $0.36757 off-peak. A baseline credit of $0.08140 per kWh applies to baseline usage, and the tariff says that rate plan is opt-in. Healdsburg's November 2026 Tier 1 rate is $0.1765, and even its Tier 2 rate of $0.3192 is below those PG&E winter figures. Bills in PG&E territory also depend on the rate plan and on whether generation comes from PG&E or a community supplier such as Sonoma Clean Power, which bills generation separately from PG&E delivery.

In 2023 the city projected that, with the new rates in place, Healdsburg customers would still pay 41 to 46 percent less than PG&E and Sonoma Clean Power customers, about $11 million a year across the community. With the fixed charges now close to equal, nearly all of that gap is in the energy charge.

"With Healdsburg's electric rates 50% lower than PG&E and Sonoma Clean Power (SCP), Healdsburg electric customers receive significant savings on their monthly energy bills." City of Healdsburg staff report, June 5, 2023

The supply side helps explain the gap. The Press Democrat reported in 2023 that about 38 percent of the city's electricity came from the Geysers geothermal plant, 18 percent from the Lodi Energy Center, and 8 percent from the city's Floating Solar Project.

The All-Electric House and the Solar Roof

The D-4 schedule matters most for buyers interested in electrified homes. It applies to homes whose primary heat is permanently installed electric heat, with no natural gas or propane furnace. Its prices match D-1, but its daily Tier 1 baselines are larger, 12.0 kWh in summer and 12.7 kWh in winter, compared with 10.2 and 10.8 kWh on D-1. An all-electric home therefore buys more of its power at the lower Tier 1 price each month. Since heavy users saw the smallest percentage increase this November, a heat-pump home in Healdsburg Electric territory is one of the most favorable setups under the current rates.

Rooftop solar works differently. Each billing period, extra kWh are credited at that period's rate. If a customer generates more than it uses over a full 12 months, the surplus is credited at $0.0888 per kWh, and the customer must sign the city's interconnection agreement first. When the power a panel replaces costs about 18 cents per kWh, each solar kWh saves less than it would where retail power costs more, and annual surplus earns about half the Tier 1 price. A buyer looking at a home with solar should get the seller's real bills and production history, because estimates prepared for another utility won't match Healdsburg's rates.

What the Increases Paid For

The rate plan also funded work on the streets. The 2023 staff report tied the increases to undergrounding Grove Street between Dry Creek Road and Grant Street, undergrounding parts of Healdsburg Avenue from Parkland Farms to just south of the Community Center, and a grant match for seismic retrofitting at the Badger Substation. The combined estimate was $6.9 million. The city's 2026 wildfire mitigation plan budgets $3.9 million for a project to remove about 5,300 feet of overhead high-voltage line and equipment.

According to the staff report, the projected surplus in the final year is meant to rebuild reserves after the deficit years of the plan. The FY2026-27 column is the last one in Resolution 72-2023.

Before You Compare Two Addresses

1. Confirm the electric provider for the parcel, especially on Fitch Mountain or near Grove Street.
2. Ask for 12 months of the seller's electric bills, including at least one winter cycle.
3. Note whether the home qualifies for D-4 all-electric service or uses gas or propane heat.
4. For homes with solar, ask for the interconnection agreement and the annual true-up statement.
5. When comparing with a PG&E-served home, find out which rate plan and generation supplier the bills reflect.

This post is general information about published utility rates, not financial advice. Please confirm the numbers for your own situation with the utility and your own advisors.

Questions about utility costs come up all the time when Bay Area clients compare a Healdsburg address with one a few miles south. A seller's past bills are one of the most useful documents in the disclosure packet. If you'd like help reading them for a home you're considering, Ceci Cook is glad to go through them with you. Let's Connect.