National Grid residential and business customers in St. Lawrence County are seeing reduced electric bills starting this month, due to lower rates approved by the New York Public Service Commission in December.

Reductions in bills will range from about six percent for residential and small business customers to up to 23 percent for large commercial customers.

A residential customer who uses 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity who would have paid about $80 per month will, under the new rate structure, be paying about $74.

A small non-demand commercial customer using 500 kWh of electricity per month would pay about $93 before and about $86 now for the same amount of electricity.

A mid-sized industrial customer using 750 kilowatts of electricity paid about $37,380 per month for supply in the past. Under the new plan, that same customer using 750 kw would pay $29,075 per month.

Large industrial customers would see the biggest difference. A customer in this rate class using 4,000 kw per month would pay $139,400 a month before and about $120,100 now, a drop of about $19,300.

Ken Daly, president of National Grid for New York said, "At a time when costs are rising at a rapid pace, this reduction can help counteract those trends and stimulate local businesses and communities across upstate New York."

The Public Service Commission granted the rate reduction since National Grid finished paying off Niagara Mohawk for the infrastructure the private company bought from the public utility.