Boorowa mayor Wendy Tuckerman announced Council, along with other councils throughout the state, will undertake a specialist review of the pricing change, which will see Boorowa face a 109 per cent increase in charges.

"It's particularly galling when street lights were part of the electricity asset strip in rural NSW. Communities used to own the electricity assets. Now people in regional NSW are being asked to pay even more and the state pockets the profits. It's not so much about paying an electricity bill as paying an electricity tax," Cr Tuckerman said.

"It's has been very challenging. The claims being made by Essential Energy are part of piece of work filled with technical information and we really needed to get expert help.

"We only had a few weeks to pull it all together, but what we have found should inspire the Australian Energy Regulator to take a good hard and independent look at what we believe to be unfair and just plain wrong."

Cr Tuckerman said the price increases will cost regional NSW millions of dollars, money that could be better spent elsewhere, on roads or other ageing infrastructure such as sporting facilities and community buildings.

She said the technical review identified a number of substantive reasons to reject Essential Energy's claims for a price rise.

She added the review found evidence suggesting that Essential Energy is not managing its street lighting maintenance and technology choices efficiently.

The utility has also been particularly slow to take up new more reliable, more energy efficient and lower cost lighting options such as LEDs.

Essential Energy service levels were also found to be substantially below urban areas and not meeting the basic requirements of the NSW Public Lighting Code more than eight years after it was introduced.

Councils have called for the Australian Energy Regulator to reject Essential Energy's proposal for dramatic price increases and are calling for a complete review by Essential Energy of how it is managing the street lighting service.