(3-4 min. read)
Today, the Office of Public Accountability (OPA) released a new report and report fact sheet examining electricity rates and customer bills at LADWP – comparing them to other California utilities and evaluating affordability in local context. This new report is a foundational building block for ongoing OPA efforts to discuss and help develop solutions to the utility affordability challenges many Angelenos face while supporting LADWP's progress in affordably modernizing and decarbonizing the utility.
Three Core Questions Addressed in OPA's newest report
As Los Angeles advances significant infrastructure investments to support the delivery of safe, reliable and clean electricity among other rising societal costs, affordability has become a central issue. For households and businesses utility bills are not about abstract policy, they present real challenges that require planning and sometimes hard decisions. This report is designed to provide a clear, data-driven foundation for understanding where LADWP stands today and what affordability pressures may lie ahead.
OPA’s report centers on three core questions:
- How do LADWP’s electricity rates and typical bills compare to peer utilities across California today?
- How have these rates and bills grown over time?
- What do those costs mean in the context of income levels and economic vulnerability in Los Angeles?
Within the report, affordability is evaluated not only through peer comparison, but through local economic realities — including household income, cumulative cost-of-living pressures, and the distribution of impacts across customer groups. Importantly, the report emphasizes distributional impacts, not just system-wide averages. Looking at averages alone can mask how costs affect lower-income households or renters differently than higher-income customers.
What the Report Finds
In the report, we find that over the last 10 years, LADWP has maintained rates below California’s investor-owned utilities SDG&E, PG&E, and SCE. Among municipal-owned utilities, LADWPs rates fall towards the middle. Over that period, LADWP rates grew slightly more than inflation, but slower than wages and core household expenses. When looking at today’s position, LADWP customer bills on average are about 42% lower than SCE (its closest neighbor) for small households, 27% lower than Glendale, but about 35% higher than Anaheim. The report includes other utilities and compares other ratepayer classes (e.g. larger households and businesses) as well.
However, just because LADWP bills may look good compared to other utilities, that doesn’t mean today’s ratepayers don’t have concerns and needs. For example, in 2024, LADWP ratepayers’ average percent of household income spent on electricity was in line with the state average and generally lower than SCE, PG&E and SDG&E. But, since many customer assistance programs haven’t been increased in years, assistance has decreased by 10% over the last five years due to inflation. Further, given that two-thirds of Los Angeles is renter-occupied, and that about 60% of these renters are categorized as “severely cost-burdened” (spending upwards of 50% of household income on rent and utilities), these populations are particularly vulnerable to energy insecurity resulting from even modest rate increases.
Using the Report with Community Input to Identify and Promote Future Solutions for Affordability
OPA’s role is to provide independent, transparent analysis that informs decision-makers and the public. Following this charge, the report is meant to ground future discussions in data — not to pre-determine policy outcomes. It also builds on direct community engagement OPA conducted in January and February where OPA hosted three public listening sessions across the LADWP service territory focused on how utility costs are affecting households and small businesses. Participants highlighted not only concerns about bill levels, but also challenges with program awareness, access, and enrollment.
Those conversations helped inform the development of the report and underscored an important insight: affordability is not just about rates — it is also about access to assistance programs, billing clarity, and customer support.
To continue this work, OPA has scheduled three additional solution-focused workshops in March and April. These sessions will bring ratepayers together to receive information on assistance programs available to them and gather input to identify practical improvements to outreach, program accessibility, and affordability strategies. We encourage residents, small businesses, and community organizations to participate and help shape solutions.
OPA Suite of Public Tools for Transparency
In addition to the report, OPA recently launched a publicly accessible digital dashboard that allows residents, journalists, and policymakers to compare LADWP rates against peer utilities over time. As described in our recent blog post, “LADWP Time Machine,” this interactive tool enables users to examine rate trends, benchmark comparisons, and historical changes in a transparent format. We also released a series of videos and blogs meant to provide additional insights into LADWP decision-making, oversite and rates.
Together, the report and other OPA materials are intended to support an informed, equity-centered conversation about affordability — one grounded in data and accessible to the public — reflecting our ongoing commitment to equity, transparency, and responsible stewardship on behalf of Los Angeles ratepayers.
Download the report and fact sheet at the links provided to learn more.