Understanding my electric bill

What am I pay­ing for?

Have you ever looked at your elec­tric bill and asked your­self, “What does all this mean?”

As a not-for-proft elec­tric coop­er­a­tive, Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive exists for the sole pur­pose of serv­ing mem­bers. So while there may be no hid­den fees for gen­er­at­ing prof­its, deci­pher­ing your bill may still be a bit con­fus­ing. Hope­ful­ly, by this article’s end, you’ll gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what makes up your elec­tric bill and what you’re pay­ing for each month.

Let’s take it from the top.

If you receive a paper bill or e‑bill, you’ll see some basic info near the top of your bill, such as your name, account num­ber, tele­phone num­ber, and address. You’ll also notice “rate” and “cycle,” both with a num­ber below them.

Coastal Elec­tric offers a vari­ety of com­pet­i­tive rate sched­ules, such as rates for res­i­den­tial mem­bers, Advance Pay mem­bers, mem­bers using elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ers, and indus­tri­al ser­vices.

A cycle is a group of meters that are read or billed at a cer­tain time. Coastal Electric’s mem­bers com­prise 20 billing cycles, mean­ing we bill on 20 days each month. Your cycle num­ber sim­ply iden­ti­fies which cycle you are in.

Next, you’ll see the dates of ser­vice being billed, along with your last meter read­ing and the meter read­ing on the date of billing. If you sub­tract the “pre­vi­ous” read­ing from the “present,” the result will equal your kilo­watt-hour (kWh) use for that time peri­od.

Basi­cal­ly, a res­i­den­tial bill is the sum of a facil­i­ties charge, ener­gy charge, and pow­er cost adjust­ment.

Let’s talk about each.

You’ll see the facil­i­ties charge list­ed on the first line of the next sec­tion of your bill. Even before you use one kilo­watt-hour of elec­tric­i­ty, it costs mon­ey to bring pow­er to your house, and that cost is shared equal­ly among all Coastal Elec­tric mem­bers. Togeth­er, everyone’s facil­i­ties charge cov­ers right-of-way main­te­nance, equip­ment like poles and lines, inter­est, depre­ci­a­tion, insur­ance, labor, and even the cost of pro­cess­ing your bill. Those costs don’t change based on how much elec­tric­i­ty you use. That’s why that $33 charge is the same every month.

One line down is the ener­gy charge, which is based on how much elec­tric­i­ty you used (mea­sured in kWh). Next is the pow­er cost adjust­ment, which can either be a charge or cred­it. Because the actu­al cost of gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty varies (usu­al­ly frac­tions of a cent), and is caused by changes in fuel costs, how much of each fuel is used dur­ing that peri­od, and whole­sale mar­ket prices for elec­tric­i­ty, the pow­er cost adjust­ment helps track the actu­al cost of pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty with­out over­col­lect­ing or under­col­lect­ing rev­enue from mem­bers.

For­tu­nate­ly, the mem­ber-elect­ed board of direc­tors has adopt­ed meth­ods for col­lect­ing rev­enue that smooth month-to-month fluc­tu­a­tions and pro­vide rate sta­bil­i­ty for mem­bers.

Besides the three main com­po­nents of facil­i­ties charge, ener­gy charge, and pow­er cost adjust­ment, you’ll see charges for state, local and, if applic­a­ble, fran­chise tax.

You may see oth­er line items on your bill, depend­ing on the ser­vices in which you par­tic­i­pate, such as a Coop­er­a­tive Solar kWh cred­it or charge, a charge for out­door light­ing, or a charge for Surge Guard pro­tec­tion. (To learn more about the ser­vices, vis­it www.CoastalElectric.Coop or call 800–421-2343.)

Mem­bers will also notice less than a dol­lar deb­it for “Oper­a­tion Round Up con­tri­bu­tion.” Oper­a­tion Round Up (ORU) is a vol­un­tary pro- gram through which Coastal Elec­tric mem­bers allow their elec­tric bills to be round­ed up to the next dol­lar, with the change invest­ed back into the com­mu­ni­ty through the Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive Foun­da­tion. ORU adds up to about $6 a year, on aver­age.

The foundation’s mis­sion is to help meet the food, health, safe­ty, edu­ca­tion, and shel­ter needs of res­i­dents in coun­ties served by Coastal Elec­tric. ORU dol­lars fund schol­ar­ships for local stu­dents, Bright Ideas grants for teach­ers, and the Wash­ing­ton Youth Tour lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence, among oth­er caus­es.

Near the bot­tom of the bill, you’ll see infor­ma­tion that may be valu­able in man­ag­ing your ener­gy use, such as a com­par­i­son of how many kWh you used this billing peri­od, the pre­vi­ous billing peri­od, and the same billing peri­od last year. You’ll see a chart show­ing your elec­tric­i­ty use over the last 13 months, an aver­age of how many kWh a day you used for the cur­rent billing peri­od, and the aver­age cost per day.

Final­ly, you’ll see a total amount due and a due date.

Now you know a lit­tle more about what goes into that total amount, but if you still have ques­tions about your bill, please reach out to your Coastal Elec­tric. We exist to serve you!