How To Read Your Electric Bill

How to find your current electricity rate

To determine your current month’s price per kWh, you will first need your most recent electricity bill. On your bill you will most likely see three sections, supply, delivery, and taxes & fees.

Supply

Supply charges are what you are actually charged for the electricity that is flowing into your home. If you are buying electricity through your local Utility (provider), they may use multiple sources to supply your electricity and may even charge you multiple rates depending on how much electricity you use. Most utility companies, and many suppliers do not have fixed rates and therefore, your rates may change from month to month. If this seems very complicated, don’t worry. We will go over exactly how to find your average cost per kWh whether you have a single or multi- tier system.

Delivery charges

Delivery charges are what your current provider (Utility) charges you to deliver the electricity to your home or business. Providers maintain and own the power lines that deliver electricity to your home. The charges detailed in the delivery charges of the sample bills below are what you are charged for the delivery of your electricity and not the actual rate you are charged for that electricity.

Taxes & Fees

Under the Taxes & Fees section of your bill, you will find charges which are unavoidable. The environmental cost recovery adjustment and energy efficiency programs are both based on your usage and can be lowered by lowering how much electricity you use. The same holds true for municipal and state taxes. If you spend less on electricity, you will pay fewer taxes. As far as franchise costs go, the way this fee is calculated is based upon the franchise agreement that your municipality may have with ComEd.

Find your kWh charge

Below, we have an example of a ComEd bill. Specifically, this is the back of their latest bill. For this type of bill, no math is involved. All you have to do is look under the supply section of your bill and find the detailed breakdown of your energy charge. This breakdown is the only line on this bill under supply and reads Electric Supply Charges 830 kWh x 0.07133. Based on this example bill, you would have used 830 kWh last month at a rate of $0.07133 per kWh. If you have a bill that does not match this new format and would like to see more example ComEd bills, you can find examples and details of their new and old bills on ComEd’s Website.

Determine your average cost per kWh

For you to properly compare your current rate to a fixed rate such as Santanna Energy’s Fixed Rate plan, you will need to average your cost per kWh across multiple bills. We recommend between 6-12 months as the price of electricity fluctuates depending on the season. Before we begin the averaging process, we will need the amount of kWh used in each bill, the charge per kWh from each bill, and the total amount of kWh you have used from all the bills you wish to average.

After you have this information, we can begin to average it all out.

The averaging equation looks like this:

But we will break it down step by step for you.

First, total up the amount of kWh that you have used across your bills by adding up all of the Kwh you have found under the supply sections. For demonstration purposes, we will say that across two bills you used 1,500 kWh.

Next, we need to find the ratio between the amount of kWh used in each bill compared to the total number of kWh. For bill 1 (sample bill), we used 830 kWh so the ratio would be:

we would do the same thing for bill 2 and come up with a ratio of:

After determining the ratios for each bill, you need to multiply the ratios by the cost per kWh for each bill. For bill 1, the equation would look like this. You first take the ratio we found for bill 1, then multiply it by the cost per kWh.

After doing this, do the same thing for bill 2, multiply the ratio we found from bill 2 with the cost per kWh for electricity in bill 2 (For the purposes of this example, we can say that cost per kWh for bill 2 was ).

The two numbers you have just found represent the amount of money per kWh that each bill represents in your average electricity cost per kWh to determine the average cost, you simply add these two numbers together.

Now, you have your average electric rate per kWh, $0.07078. Normally utility companies list these numbers with 5 decimal places which is why we have done that here. For averaging more than two bills together, you would use the same process but simply add more bills.

How to save on your electricity bill

Thanks to energy deregulation, you have a choice when it comes to who you see in the supply section of your electricity bill. Your local utility makes no money off of the sale of electricity, only its delivery. When you go with an independent electricity supplier, you can have control over the prices you are charged for electrical generation.

At Santanna Energy Services, we offer a low fixed rate per KWh. You will continue to receive your electricity bill through your current Utility (provider) while enjoying the lower rates that Santana Energy Services offers.