How much am I paying for electricity?
You’d think this would be a simple thing to know but…it isn’t. I have Googled it, I have checked with my utility website and I can say my electricity bill is nowhere NEAR the low prices I find. I get there are added fees but still…seems waaaay off (as in advertised prices are $0.013 to $0.07 per kWh but my bill is closer to $0.65).
What am I missing?
What is the breakdown of those $0.65 on your bill? The cheap rates are only one part of the total, apparently.
Usually there are different prices for different times of day.
This is not a bill but they sent me this:
My bill last month (not sure how I missed it when it came in) was $368. My place is maybe 1100 sq/ft and I live alone. Almost all of that would have been heat. But, I keep my temps at 69…not really keeping a toasty place.
ETA: I live in Chicago and ComEd (Exelon?) is my electricity provider.
I interpret that as the $117 is projected to be the total for the entire month, not a week’s worth. $368 would be a lot, though. $0.65/kWh are prices rarely seen even in Europe.
FWIW…my last bill:
I will be calling ComEd tomorrow to discuss it with them. I cannot imagine getting to that.
And, again, when I Google electricity prices they are WAAAAAAY lower than what this is. More, none ever agree. And all are way off this cost. I am missing something.
You’re heating your home with electricity?
Looking at one of my electricity bills from last fall here in southeast Michigan, I see the following:
kWh used: 763.842
On-peak: 115.358
off-peak: 648.48
Power supply charges
On peak capacity charge: 115.358 @ 0.0556 = $6.41
off peak non capacity charge: 648.484 @ 0.03746 = $24.29
off peak capacity charge: 648.484 @ 0.04828 = $31.31
off peak non capacity charge: 115.358 @ 0.04313 = $4.98
power supply cost recovery: 763.842 @ 0.011270 = $8.61
other power supply volumetric surcharges: $1.45
Delivery charges
Service charge: $8.50
Distribution: 763.842 @ 0.06879 = $52.54
LIEAF factor = $0.88
Other delivery volumetric surcharges: $7.19
Add it up, and it’s 763.842 kWh for $146.16, or 19.1 cents per kWh. Even with all of the fees your provider tacks on, you shouldn’t be paying 65 cents per kWh.
There’s a whole separate section of my bill for natural gas consumption, which cost me another $133.93 during that same billing period. That’s why I’m wondering about whether you’re actually heating your place with electricity. You should be able to get a fully itemized bill - if not in the mail, then online - that will show you all the costs that go into the grand total at the bottom of your monthly bill.
I live in a hi-rise.
My stove is natural gas.
My heat is electric. No doubt about it.
I have two of these in my place (heater/AC):
I should add AC is provided by the building with giant units on the roof. In summer, this is just a fan blowing air over cold pipes from the roof units. My electric bill goes down but I still pay for it via assessments (which are averaged over the year so prices do not spike).
OK, thanks.
I found this PDF that shows the charges that go into an Illinois ComEd bill:
I guess you would be in the “customers that are multi family and that have electric space heat” section. If you add up all of the per-kWh charges, it looks like you should be paying this much before the flat fees get added in:
distribution facilities, $0.01768
distribution tax, $0.00117
Transmission services, $0.01263
Supply charge, $0.05055
environmental cost recovery adjustment, $0.00033
energy efficieny programs, $0.00333
Total, $0.08568 per kWh. The one missing line item is the purchased electricity adjustment, which they say varies month to month. You’d need to check your itemized bills to see what that’s been costing you.
The other fees I see are the customer charge (~$9) and the standard metering charge ($4.70). So if your usage is 800 kWh, then it seems like your total cost per kWh should only be about 10.2 cents. There may be other charges like state tax and franchise costs, but no way should it work out to 65 cents per kWh. You need to get your hands on an itemized bill to understand what you’re being charged for.
Your website should be able to show you a pdf of what a mailed-out paper bill looks like. Which should have a full itemization akin to what @Machine_Elf posted from his bill in post #6.
Everything else you’ve shown us lacks the detail you / we need to know anything useful.
Maybe ComEd is trying real hard to hide those details, but it’s a decent bet their regulator requires that info to be available, but just not easily.
I looked. I find this very difficult to understand. I mean, I can follow the math but so many charges…what is my actual kWh rate? (I can actually figure that out too from what you see below…but it is waaaay different than what ComEd tells you they charge…no doubt there is a small asterisk somewhere when the quote a number.)
ComEd says my electricity costs $0.06848/kWh. Which would be $161.89 for my use. I get there are taxes and stuff but, as you can see, my bill was $368.32. Seems a bit of a jump too far and that is where I am missing why my bill more than doubles.
I added up all of the per-kWh charges (ever number after a “X” and came up with 13.401 cents per kWh. That’s a good match for the advertised price you mentioned in your OP. Even after tacking on the franchise cost and state/muni taxes, I still come up with just 15.6 cents per kWh.
Your usage on that bill, 2364 kWh, is quite a bit more than how things were shaping up in post #4; based on those weekly usage amounts, your current month total looks like it will be about 800 kWh. I guess the weather has been a lot warmer for the last couple of weeks, so you’re using less electricity for heat?
Can you explain how you came up with the 65 cents per kWh that you cited in your OP?
Projected bill is $117 based on 171 kWh.
I see where I went wrong.
Which leads back to your title and opening question.
How much am I paying per kWh for electricity?
How much am I paying for electricity?
If your question is really “What is the price to me of the raw moving electrons before all the other BS charges?”, that’s one answer. If the question is “What is my total cost for my consumption?” or equivalently, “If I consumed e.g. 20% more, how much more would that cost me?” that’s a different answer.
The good news is that it appears almost all the charges on your bill are straight pro-rata based on consumption. There are two flat fees totalling $12.94/mo. Then there are the three taxes that might be flat-rate or might be pro-rata; we’d need another example from another month to determine that.
But big picture, the price of raw electrons is $0.05378 per kWh. Delivery to you is another $0.01470 per kWh. So not quite 7 cents per kWh.
Conversely, the total expense of $368.32 with tax, license, dealer prep, options, and French Fries with that for 2364 kWh of consumption tells us you’re paying a total all-up cost of $0.1558 per kWh. So ~15-1/2 cents.
To within a few decimal places, your monthly cost scales at 15-1/2 cents per kWh consumed.
The key thing to understand is that the way regulators set raites is for the utility to complain to them about every niggledy cost they have to bear that scales more or less directly with their electricity production or purchasing, and get those items added to the list of things they’re permitted to “pass through” to the customer. Most of that stuff under taxes and fees is like that; they’re forced to pay it, and they’re allowed to pass that through to you as long as they itemize it. So they do.
Similarly for the $86.52 under Delivery for distribution facilities charge. They have been permitted by the government to itemize some of their physical plant installation and depreciation charges and pass them on to you in itemized fashion. So they do.
It’s really not much different than the restaurants starting to add a service charge that’s not a server tip, or for stores or gas stations to charge extra to pay with a credit card. In each case they’re taking what’s normally a cost of doing business hidden in their overall income and expense statement, and itemizing it out to you.
Yes.
The source of your confusion is that you consumed approximately 14 times more electricity than you thought, rather than the per-kwh all-up rate being 14 times higher than typical.
Thanks…I guess the next question is are there more efficient ways to heat my place (can’t do heat pumps or solar…in hi-rise)? Or, should I invest in sweaters?
ETA: I think my problem is not really understanding what a kWh really is. Like most people, I just use electricity without thinking about it much. Most times it is so little, like charging my phone, it diesn’t really register. What I lack a sense of is how much running the heater actually costs (or stove if mine was electric). And, it may seem no big deal to spend an extra $4 today to be warm but, it adds up.
Better windows and/or more insulation? If that’s even possible in your situation
It is not possible for me to improve my windows. And, I have floor-to-ceiling windows. Great views but their insulation is crap (and it is a relatively modern building so the windows aren’t bad…but nowhere near as good as a wall with insulation would be).
I knew it when I bought the place and expected higher electric costs…that last one was a surprise though.
Have you looked into internal window inserts – if only for the heating season?
This kind of thing:
Of course, if you only used them seasonally, you’d have to store them in the off-season.
I think a look around with a thermographic camera (phone app or tool rental) might bear fruit.
There are also energy audit firms who can do a pretty rigorous and quantitative evaluation of your unit’s performance.