MORE ON CLEVELAND PUBLIC POWER RATES: Public Power Magazine publishes a big statistical directory every Winter with info on municipal electric systems across the U.S. It's not on line, but yesterday I was at the Library and decided to take a look at the 2003 issue. Turns out it lists the total retail kilowatt-hour sales and the total retail revenue from said sales, for each municipal electric utility in 2001. So I did the math...

The average kilowatt-hour sold by Cleveland Public Power in 2001 cost 9.4 cents. (Remember, this averages all sales to customers of all sizes).

There are eleven other municipal electric utilities in the counties surrounding Cleveland. The average price price per kilowatt-hour to customers of the Painesville and Orrville systems was 5.8 cents. Amherst and Wellington charged 6.5 cents; Lodi, 6.7 cents; Wadworth, 6.8 cents; Seville, 7.0 cents; Oberlin, 7.3 cents; Grafton, 7.9 cents; Cuyahoga Falls, 8.0 cents.

Only Hudson came within a penny of Cleveland's price, at 8.6 cents -- still 8% cheaper than CPP.

The City of Columbus, the only other big-city public power system in Ohio, sold its average retail kilowatt-hour in 2001 for 6.6 cents... 30% less than Cleveland Public Power.

Same product. Same kind of ownership (Ohio cities). Same legal requirements. Hell, they're all part of the same state association and go to conferences together! So why does Cleveland Public Power charge so much more than all these other "muny lights"?