“Not just better living, a better life.” So entices the website for Kapilina Beach Homes, billed as luxury apartments in Ewa Beach: “Now renting happiness!”

Unfortunately, there’s little happiness now among some tenants, who have seen their electricity costs skyrocket inexplicably, with some bills at $1,000 or more. That’s huge, considering that residents who attended a Monday meeting noted monthly bills typically in the $300 or $400 range; even with recent record temperatures, things had topped out at about $600.

Those monthly bills are high enough for sticker- shock, given what Hawaiian Electric says its average, non-solar residential customer in Ewa Beach paid in August: $279, at a rate of 28.5 cents per kilowatt hour. But Kapilina Beach Homes does not run on the HECO power grid. Instead, residents here occupy about 1,400 former Navy homes at Iroquois Point, so they run under an aging power system, built in the 1960s to serve the area.

The Navy owns that grid, and bills Kapilina’s property manager for the energy used, who in turn bills tenants. On Tuesday, the Navy raised its electricity rate to 32 cents per kilowatt hour, a hefty increase from 19.7 cents. Billing cycles and efforts to stabilize fluctuation trends come into play, but it seems that Kapilina’s ratepayers deserve more detailed explanation of their newly inflated bills.

The state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates HECO rates, has no jurisdiction here. But it seems that the state Office of Consumer Protection or other such agency should look into this, for the sake of Kapilina Beach and other tenants in this situation.