A Charleston-area home using 1,000 kWh in a month pays about $170 for it on Dominion Energy or on Berkeley Electric Cooperative, and less on Santee Cooper's base rate. That is the short answer. The longer one is that the three utilities charge in three different ways, so the cheapest one for your neighbor may not be the cheapest one for you, and you don't get to pick anyway.
Most pages that answer this question are national sites working from modeled or self-reported averages rather than the local rate schedules. So I went to each utility's own published schedule and priced the same month of power on all three.
First: which utility do you have?
Your address decides. Utility territories in South Carolina are assigned, so there is no shopping around the way there is in Texas.
- Dominion Energy South Carolina serves most of the Charleston area. It is an investor-owned company.
- Berkeley Electric Cooperative serves over 135,000 member accounts in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties. It is a not-for-profit owned by the people it serves, and the largest electric co-op in the state.
- Santee Cooper is the state-owned utility. It sells directly to homes in its retail area, which its rate schedules list as Berkeley, Georgetown and Horry counties.
Berkeley Electric has an address lookup on its service territory page. If you are house-hunting, it is worth a minute: two homes a mile apart can sit on different utilities.
The same month of power, priced three ways
These are standard residential rates, a 30-day month, before city fees and taxes.
| Monthly use | Dominion, summer | Dominion, winter | Berkeley Electric | Santee Cooper (base) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 kWh | $174 | $170 | $171 | $131 |
| 1,500 kWh | $261 | $246 | $234 | $171 |
| 2,000 kWh | $348 | $322 | $297 | $210 |
Three things to know before you read too much into it:
- Dominion's figure leaves out your city's franchise fee. Mine, in North Charleston, is 4%, which adds $7 to $14 to those totals.
- Santee Cooper's figure is a floor, not a bill. It assumes a 4 kW peak-hour demand (more on that below) and leaves out the fuel adjustment and three other adjustment clauses its schedule adds. I couldn't find current values for those published, so treat that column as the least you would pay.
- 1,000 kWh is Dominion's own benchmark for a typical home. Plenty of Lowcountry houses run past it in July. Mine uses far more, because I charge an EV and run a server rack; my bills are here.
The Dominion column comes from the same bill engine that runs the analyzer, which is checked against my own Dominion bills. It also matches Dominion's public figure of about $171 for 1,000 kWh after the July 2026 increase.
How each one charges
The totals look similar. The structures are not.
Dominion Energy (Rate 8, effective July 2026). A fixed charge of about $12 a month, then 15.9¢ per kWh for the first 800 kWh. Above 800 kWh the price steps up to 17.4¢ in summer billing months and down to 15.3¢ in winter. So a heavy summer month costs more per kWh, which is the opposite of a bulk discount.
Berkeley Electric (Rate 10/11, effective March 2025). A service charge of $1.50 a day, about $45 a month, then a flat 12.62¢ per kWh. The big fixed charge and low energy price mean a small user pays more here than on Dominion and a large user pays less. The lines cross at roughly 1,000 kWh.
Santee Cooper (RG-25, effective April 2025). $20 a month, 7.92¢ per kWh, and a demand charge of $8.00 per kW. The demand charge is set by your single highest hour of use during peak hours in the billing period. Peak hours are 3 to 6 pm from April through October and 6 to 9 am from November through March. Run the oven, the dryer and the air conditioning together at 5 pm once, and that hour prices the charge for the month. At 4 kW it is $32. At 7 kW it is $56.
That last one surprises people. On Dominion a demand charge only exists on the optional time-of-use plan. On Santee Cooper it is part of the standard rate.
The one thing all three have in common: late afternoon
Each utility has decided the same few hours are expensive, and each one will sell you power much more cheaply if you stay out of them.
| Peak window | Peak price | Off-peak price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dominion, Rate 7 | 4–8 pm summer, 6–9 am winter | 17.4¢ plus $10.90 per kW | 10.1¢, and 8.8¢ overnight |
| Berkeley Electric, Time of Day | 3–6 pm Apr–Oct, 6–9 am Nov–Mar | 33.37¢ | 7.88¢ |
| Santee Cooper, RT-25 | 3–6 pm Apr–Oct, 6–9 am Nov–Mar | 33.80¢ | 7.92¢ |
These are optional plans. Whether one helps you comes down to how much of your power you use inside the window.
Berkeley Electric makes the arithmetic easy. Its Time of Day rate beats its regular rate as long as less than about 19% of your power is used in the three peak hours. Three hours is 12.5% of a day, so a home that simply avoids piling its heaviest loads into 3 to 6 pm is already near break-even, and a home that moves them out comes out ahead. If nothing at all drew from the grid in the window, 1,000 kWh would cost about $124 against $171 on the regular rate.
Dominion's version works the same way with a sharper edge, because of the demand charge. I explain that in Rate 7 vs. Rate 8 and the demand charge, explained.
Two cautions. Berkeley Electric asks for a one-year agreement on its Time of Day rate. And on Dominion, leaving Rate 7 locks you out of time-of-use plans for twelve months. Check a year of your own usage before you commit to either.
The Dominion–NextEra merger: who it touches
NextEra Energy has proposed to buy Dominion Energy. In South Carolina the case is before the Public Service Commission as Docket 2026-186-EG. I covered the deal itself in Is Dominion being sold to NextEra?. Here is what matters locally.
It is not decided. The commission's evidentiary hearing begins December 8, 2026, and a final order is expected by late January 2027. The schedule can move, and regulators in Virginia and North Carolina and two federal agencies also have to sign off.
You can say something about it in person. The commission is holding customer public hearings, and one is here:
- Thursday, November 12, 2026, 6:00 pm, Charleston County Council Chambers, Lonnie Hamilton III Public Services Building, 4045 Bridgeview Drive, 2nd floor, North Charleston.
- Tuesday, December 8, 2026, in Columbia or online, 9 am to noon and 5 to 9 pm.
You can speak at one session, for up to three minutes. Pre-register by emailing communications@psc.sc.gov or calling 803-896-4120, and you will be called first.
What is on the table for bills. The companies have proposed a credit worth roughly $10 a month on a residential account for the first two years after closing. Nothing changes on your bill while the case is open. The question the commission is weighing is what happens to rates after those two years, as the cost of building for new demand gets divided up.
Who is outside it. Berkeley Electric is owned by its members. Santee Cooper is owned by the state. Neither is part of the transaction, and neither's rates are set in this docket.
What to weigh, whichever utility you have
- Read the kWh, not the dollars. The dollar total moves with weather and rate cases. The kWh number tells you what your house is doing. Every comparison in this post starts from it.
- Know your fixed charge. It is about $12 on Dominion, $20 on Santee Cooper and $45 on Berkeley Electric. You pay it before you turn on a light, and it is the part no thermostat setting will change.
- Find out when you use power, not only how much. All three utilities price late afternoon as the expensive time. If you are on Santee Cooper, that already shapes your standard bill.
- Look at the optional plan before you need it. Each utility has one. Each has a commitment attached.
- If you are on Dominion, follow the merger, but don't plan around the credit. Ten dollars a month for two years is proposed, temporary and unapproved.
- If you are thinking about solar, ask what your utility pays for what you send back. Berkeley Electric currently credits surplus solar at 6.03¢ per kWh, a little under half of what it charges for the same kWh.
- If you are buying a house, ask which utility serves it and for a year of bills. It tells you more than the square footage does.
Where a battery fits
A home battery does one thing on a bill: it lets you buy power in the cheap hours and use it in the expensive ones. On all three utilities those hours are published, and the gap between them is wide. On Dominion's Rate 7, with a battery covering the peak, the same 1,000 kWh that costs $170 to $174 on the standard rate prices at about $110.
The analyzer works that out for your own Dominion bill, with the backup time and the cost of a system beside it. It also runs on Berkeley Electric's published rates, comparing the regular rate with the Time of Day rate. Those results are shown before taxes and adjustments until I've checked them against a member's bill. If you're a member, you can upload yours there to help.
How these numbers were worked out: each bill is the utility's published residential rate applied to a 30-day month, before municipal franchise fees and taxes. Dominion figures use Rate 8 as effective July 1, 2026, with Rate 7 priced on the same usage assuming no power is drawn from the grid on-peak. Berkeley Electric figures use its Residential Rate Summary effective March 1, 2025. Santee Cooper figures use schedules RG-25 and RT-25, effective April 1, 2025, and exclude its fuel, demand sales, economic development and deferred cost adjustments. Rates change; the links above go to each utility's current schedule. Merger dates are from the Public Service Commission's August 11, 2026 notice and may be revised.