In a letter published Aug. 25, Susan M. Crossett, National Grid's vice president for Energy Solutions in Upstate New York, affords us her company's welcome perspective on saving energy. The notion that solutions should arise both with provider and customer appears progressive, and one congratulates National Grid for its evident good citizenship.

In that light, comparing providers may help. The maximum monthly charge per kilowatt hour used across the last three months of residency earlier this year at our northern Virginia home was 10.3 cents with all user charges and taxes included. The minimum monthly charge from National Grid during our first three months of residency in Adams is 15 cents per kilowatt hour used. Certainly tariffs can vary seasonally, so I would add that the monthly per-kilowatt-hour billing for the last full year of residency by our Adams home's former owner ranged from 14.9 to 17 cents. The total kilowatt hours consumed by the two homes in that year were comparable.

Numbers can be mind-numbing. But in plain terms, bottom-line billing for about the same amount of electricity consumed across the same 12-month period by two similar homes situated a few hundred miles apart was about 50 percent more in National Grid's service area.

What stuns me is that, of the two areas involved in this example, this area has by far the greater hydroelectric and wind-generating capacity — which happens to be nearby thus minimizing transmission costs — as well as nuclear and conventional capacity. And neither nearby green source has a fuel charge. This picture seems out of kilter.

Both providers are subject to regulation, and are due a fair return. But why should a comparatively electricity-rich region bill the residential consumer about 50 percent more for that last kilowatt hour used each month? Perhaps a governmentally based reason exists.

Francis K. Williams

Adams