Utility Billing: Know your statement
If you take a moment to understand some of the charges that show up on your utility bill, the decision to make the switch to clean, affordable solar energy gets a lot easier:
Customer Account Charge: The minimum charge for having service available, whether you used electricity or not
Delivery Service Charge: A charge, based on your kwh usage and/or kw demand, to build and operate the equipment for delivering electricity to your home/business, including lines, poles, transformers and substations
Environmental benefits surcharge: A charge to cover the costs of programs approved by the arizona corporation commission, including energy efficiency and renewable energy projects
System Benefits Charge: A charge to cover the costs of programs approved by the arizona corporation commission, including low-income assistance, demand side management, customer education, environmental, renewables, long-term public benefit research and development, nuclear fuel disposal and nuclear power plant decommissioning programs as well as other programs approved by the commission
Power Supply Adjustment: An adjustment mechanism to recover fluctuations in fuel and purchased power costs.
Metering: A fixed fee for providing and servicing the meter
Meter Reading: A fixed fee to determine your energy usage
Billing: The cost of calculating and providing your monthly statement
Generation of Electricity: The cost of producing the electricity you used this month Federal Transmission and ancillary services: the cost for moving high voltage electricity from generating facilities and other sources to the aps distribution lines
LFCR (lost fixed cost recovery) adjustor: In May 2012, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) approved new rates for APS. Because more customers are installing renewable energy systems such as solar and wind, and energy efficiency measures such as compact fluorescent light bulbs and refrigerator recycling, APS is selling less electricity, but fixed costs remain. APS is allowed to implement a new charge to recover a portion of those fixed costs.
What are these fixed costs for? Fixed costs are for items that are needed regardless of how much electricity is sold, such as power poles, wires and other delivery infrastructure.
Who will be affected by this change? All residential and small business customers are now subject to lost fixed cost recovery. Large commercial and industrial customers are not affected by this new escalated rate.
How much is this new cost? A new charge will begin appearing on affected customers’ bills in March 2013 in one of two forms: a flat addition to the existing customer charge (Flat Charge Option) or a new Lost Fixed Cost Recovery (LFCR) percentage of bill charge.
