just received electric bill. $9, 107 kwh

[max_frontal_area]

fiiiiinnnnnaaaalllllyyyy broke $6!! actual energy use was $5.90 but here in CA we get to pay an extra $4 to pick up slack for irresponsible ppl. cannot wait until some paralegal or lier picks up on the fact that is it unconstitutional to force some one to pay another persons bill.
killer class action lawsuit that will be!
IIRC that was also the big boy's doing, besides his shopping spree - what is he up to now? 4 trillion?

regardless. this bill refelcts 2 ppl, one full size dog, one 2x size cat, electic cooking and a shop with light power tool use.

unbeliveable? ok, here is something else: 5 MPG to 20 MPG what will it take?

[Frank Lee]

How many kwh?

In MN the fee structure is opposite of CA: the more you use, the cheaper the kwhs get, and the more the small users (like me) get to kick in to subsidize the large users.

The "facilities fee"- just for being hooked up to the grid- has nearly doubled to $19/mo just in the last couple years.

Good luck with that illegal to pay someone else's bill thing. We do it all the time: by virtue of owning a house, I pay for someone else's schooling, and so on.

[RobertSmalls]

I'm paying more for the hookup fee than for the electricity.

Frank, does the marginal price per KWh change? Here, unless you are a commercial or industrial customer, you pay $16/mo + $.12/KWh, regardless of how much you use. Since the marginal price is constant, there is no incentive to use more.

The utility actually has to compete with third parties on the electricity they sell, but they have a monopoly on hookup and delivery, so that's where they schedule their profit.

[redyaris]

Electrical energy charges [for a House & Garage...]

90kwh consumed [September 18 too October 18]
$0.88 Credit from last bill

$5.33/90kwh [$0.059/kwh]
$6.25 Administration Charge

$11.58 Sub Total

Delivery Charges
$17.81 Distribution Charge
$1.55 Transmission Charge
$0.79 2010 Transmission Adjustment Rider
$0.19 Credit Balance Pool Allocation Rider
$0.02 Local Access Fee

$19.98 Sub Total

$1.58 Good and Services Tax

$33.14 Total New charges

So the actual cost for 90kwh on my side of the meter is $0.368/kwh
I payed $27.81 for the delivery of $5.33 worth of electricity!
I have had bills of $24.00 for the consumption of 0kwh!

Just emagine if it cost you $27 to drive onto a gas station lot to buy $5 worth of fuel?
We might all be driving electric cars.
What puzzels me is, if most other businesses can calculate and include fixed costs' into the price, why can't utillity companies? At least then if I used 0 kwh I wouldn't get a bill, and I would be the beneficiary of my effort to be "economical".

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by redyaris

Just emagine if it cost you $27 to drive onto a gas station lot to buy $5 worth of fuel?

Or imagine if your auto insurance charged you even if you only drove a mile in a month... wait they do!
But I see your point, we get charged $11 per month for natural gas hook up, we only use natural gas for heating our house so for 8 months or more out of the year we don't use the service, almost $100 just to be hooked up without getting anything.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by RobertSmalls

I'm paying more for the hookup fee than for the electricity.

Frank, does the marginal price per KWh change? Here, unless you are a commercial or industrial customer, you pay $16/mo + $.12/KWh, regardless of how much you use. Since the marginal price is constant, there is no incentive to use more.

The utility actually has to compete with third parties on the electricity they sell, but they have a monopoly on hookup and delivery, so that's where they schedule their profit.

Yes, as kwh goes up, price/kwh goes down.

What gets me is the near doubling of the fee in such a short time. And the regressive rate structure. With the extra $9/mo, it feels like, why shouldn't I use more electricity? After all it's only a couple bux til I equal my fixed costs.

[redyaris]

Originally Posted by Ryland

Or imagine if your auto insurance charged you even if you only drove a mile in a month... wait they do!
But I see your point, we get charged $11 per month for natural gas hook up, we only use natural gas for heating our house so for 8 months or more out of the year we don't use the service, almost $100 just to be hooked up without getting anything.

You are right that there are many ways to charge for stuff. I do see that this type of pricing is sometimes the better of several evils. Each pricing system has pros and cons. The question then becomes what do we want the price signal to do in the market place? Buy more or buy less? The other question is who should benifit from economy? The indevidual or the group? The buyer or the seller? depending on the stuff being bought each of the pricing systems gets a turn as the lesser of so many evils. My preferance for things like energy is that all costs should be included in the unit price, ie $/kwh or $/GJ that way the responce to price is for most indeviduals to find ways to use less...

[Cd]

$20.10 of my electric bill is 'filler' - taxes, an automatic $6 'Customer Charge Fee', a GreenChoice charge of $1.27, Residential Litter fee of $ 5, and a 'Comprehensive Drainage fee of $ 7.75.

[max_frontal_area]

oct 13 - nov 15 = 107 kwh
the $4 irresponsible customer aid program was to be deferred into taxes
but it was much more seamless to do it like this.

our homeowners taxes go toward all sorts of "causes" for some of them we would faint if we only knew, which is why they are difficult to track.
an announced sur-charge dumped onto one of our bills easy to quantify.

regardless, this is not a fluke. i have hovered just over $6 many times.

[RobertSmalls]

When the utility is in charge of the "irresponsible customer aid" program, I'm sure it's used first and foremost to pay down bad debt that would otherwise be written off.