HONOLULU (KHON2) — Hawaiian Electric said falling gas prices will finally trickle into relief for customers in September.

Neighbor island electric bills are expected to fall and Oahu’s are not forecasted to climb as much as officials initially thought.

Officials said the relief will be for electricity used in September, which will be counted in most customers’ October bills.

“We’re not able to connect to state-to-state like on the mainland, so we generate the electricity at power plants with generating units that do use the fuel,” said Shayna Decker, Hawaiian Electric communications manager.

Below is a breakdown of the expected drop in neighbor island electric bills.

Hawaiian Electric said Oahu’s bills are still expected to rise with the closure of the AES coal plant, but dropping oil prices led experts to recalculate just how much.

“So, there was an improvement over the earlier forecasted, it will be about 4% or about $9, and so before earlier announced, it was about 7% or $15,” Decker said.

One way customers can save is through Hawaiian Electric’s Time-of-Use program, where they pay less from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“During the daytime hours, electricity would be at a cheaper rate because we want to incentivize people to use power at that time when renewable energy is really abundant, typically abundant on the grid,” Decker said.

About 250 people have signed up for the Time-of-Use program in 2022. Waikiki resident Sue Larkin is one of them and said her latest bill went down by $7, something she partly attributes to her time of use.

“And I make sure and use the washer and dryer during the Time-of-Use plan during the day, instead of letting it go into the night,” Larkin said, “it was negligible, but it still, it came down when I didn’t expect it to.”

Kahala resident Teri Pinney said her most recent electric bill doubled. She has not signed up for Time-of-Use just yet.

“No, I haven’t been and I, you know, I used to not pay attention to stuff like that, but I certainly will now,” Pinney said. “My electric bill was $477.16 and I live in a condo, a three-bedroom condo.”