Rates

The Facility Charge–built into your monthly billing–is simply the money it takes for us to build and maintain the equipment, lines, poles, substations, and run your cooperative. It is a flat fee – although the fee is different for each billing class; residential, commercial, large power or industrial.

Periodically, our board of directors performs a Cost of Service Study to make sure our Facility Charge is indeed covering the bills we incur on your behalf. The Facility Charge is due on an active account even if no kilowatt-hours are used because we still have to maintain the system that could deliver power to that service.

The easiest explanation is to say, “It’s a billing adjustment to cover the fluctuating cost of power that we purchase on your behalf.”

Try this analogy: “Gasoline stations have an advantage that they can change the cost of a gallon of gas every day when the cost of the product increases. Utility companies can’t change our base kilowatt rates every day to cover the fluctuation in the cost of power. This basic premise is the reason why the Energy Tracker is on your bill.”

The power we buy every day to sell to you has been fluctuating as much as gasoline prices. The Energy Tracker allows us to keep our base rates low at all times but still collect the money we will owe for the purchased power.

Our rate of 11.95¢ per kWh doesn’t cover the actual cost of the power you are using. The Tracker allows us to pay the difference to our power supplier.

There is no mark-up in the Tracker. There is no profit made from the Tracker. It is not a flat fee. It is only a fluctuating pass-through cost from the power supplier to us and then to you.

The good news is, you can directly affect the Energy Tracker cost on your bill. It is directly proportional to your kilowatt use in your home each month. If you have all of your Christmas lights plugged in all night long in December, your Tracker cost will be higher. If you have your pool on during the summer, your Tracker cost will be higher. If you conserve energy, your Tracker cost will go down.

Visit our Operation Round Up page for more information