Addressing our Electricity Future is Imperative for Household Affordability in NC

Residential Households are feeling the pressure more than ever - Photo of a residential household.

For families across North Carolina, the hard realities of an increasing cost of living continue to take hold paycheck by paycheck. Inflation across the board for 2025 has settled in around 3%, and continues to take hold on household staples like coffee (up 18.9% year over year), bacon (up 5.8%), and bananas (up 6.9%). The average price of a new car in 2025 just hit $50,000 (or a monthly payment of $796). And the median price for an existing home in the U.S. has just crested $435,000. Factor that on top of all of life’s other essentials, including childcare, insurance, schooling – it's no wonder families are struggling right now.

And an area that’s increasingly adding more pressure to a household’s bottom line – utility costs. Over the past five years, the average residential ratepayer in North Carolina saw a 23% increase in their utility bills – far exceeding the rate of inflation. These costs truly are adding up – according to a report from Duke Energy at the tail end of the COVID pandemic, nearly 16% of all customers were significantly behind on their bills – that's a little more than one out of every seven customers. And more than 400,000 households across North and South Carolina live at 50% of the poverty line and spend at least 30% of their household income on their electric bills.

This trend isn’t expected to reverse course anytime soon, either. In fact, as part of Duke Energy’s recently filed ‘Carolinas Resource Plan’ at the NC Utilities Commission (NCUC), they’re projecting on average a 2.4% rate increase annually over the course of the next 15 years. Some of those projections are starting to play out, as the utilities just filed their proposal for rate increases in front of the NCUC as part of the current round of rate cases. They’re now asking for a 15% rate increase between 2027-2028, which would lead to an additional $23.11 a month for an average Duke Energy Progress customer, and $17.22 for a Duke Energy Carolinas customer starting in 2027.

In large part, these requested increases in rates can be attributed to the new generation infrastructure required to meet rapidly increasing demands for electricity coming from data centers and manufacturing, and the costs to harden the grid for future storm protection. Duke Energy itself is predicting that demand for electricity over the next 15 years will be eight times the growth rate from the past 15 years. All of that new demand will require significant upgrades to grid infrastructure from generation to transmission and distribution. But what if there were alternative solutions to help mitigate some of these cost increases?

That’s where the concept ‘Behind the Meter Freedom’ comes in. Essentially, this structure allows customers who install electricity generation resources behind the utility meter to produce their own electricity without being forced on to new punitive rate structures, subject to monthly minimum bill charges, or lengthy interconnection delays. This model essentially treats new behind the meter electricity generation like a demand-reduction, in which it solely operates for the purpose of reducing the amount of electricity a ratepayer purchases from the utility. The new generation, whether it be solar, batteries, a generator, or something else, is only used on the customer side, and never exports any excess generation back to the utility – therefore eliminating any safety concerns stemming from back feeding during outages.

Why should ratepayers be interested?

Behind the meter electricity generation is a great way to reduce utility costs and hedge against increasing costs year over year. In fact, most residential solar and battery storage systems experience an average payback period between 8-10 years (and even less as rates rise). After that point, all electricity generated behind the meter is completely free and offsets your utility usage.

Under a zero-export scenario, a household is essentially producing electricity at the full retail electricity rate given that it is offsetting those electrons they would have purchased from the utility at the going retail rate. This differs from the current scenario, in which customers would initially agree to a new rate structure in order to export excess electricity generation back on to the grid. The current rate structure in North Carolina requires a monthly minimum bill charge, a non-bypassable charge, and only credits excess generation at the avoided cost rate (~ 3.4 cents per kWh).

Zero-export, behind the meter freedom eliminates the need for these minimum bill charges while crediting all generation at the amount you would pay to use it.

This is not currently allowed by statute in North Carolina. Reach out to encourage your legislators to enable ‘behind the meter freedom’ today.