Aside from the normal billing information, such as your account number, name and service location, your electric bill is full of information about your electric use and is broken down into different components designed to show you how you are charged for your electricity.
Billing and rate codes are also designated on your monthly statement and tell you what member class you are billed under. All residential services are included on the General Service, or Rate 1. A member receiving a regular monthly statement will be Bill Type 0.
The General Service Electric Rate is made up of three components;
Line 1: Distribution system capacity charge
Line 2: Wholesale power cost
Line 3: Service charge
Distribution system capacity charge
This component is charged on a per kilowatt-hour basis and is designed to recover the costs of distributing electricity that is over and above the minimum amount collected in the facility charge. Every member has slightly different needs for service beyond the minimum level. This charge is a way of recouping from each member for the costs they incur to the system.
Wholesale power cost
This is also charged on a per kilowatt-hour basis and is designed to directly pass through the cost of generating and transmitting electricity. This is the one true variable cost that LaGrange County REMC has. If we didn’t sell any power, we wouldn’t have any wholesale power cost. The electric power that you use is generated at a power plant and then transmitted thru high-voltage lines to the substations that LaGrange County REMC owns throughout the county. The wholesale energy cost is simply a pass-through of the cost of generating and transmitting the electricity.
Service charge
This is a fixed monthly charge that is designed to collect the fixed costs of bringing the electricity to your meter. If we never sold a single kilowatt-hour of electricity, this is the amount of money we must collect from each member, each month, just to keep our business going.
Additional services, such as security lighting or a trenching charge will show up on your bill as a separate line item. Credits such as geothermal or heat pump rebates, or the return of capital credits are also broken out and show up as a separate line item on your bill.
Many of our members participate in the Operation Round Up program. The amount necessary to round up your bill to the nearest dollar will appear on your monthly bill and goes into a fund that is granted to civic organizations who serve the people of LaGrange County.
Other line items include the Indiana Sales Tax, the amount due for your previous bill, the amount you paid on your last bill, and your current balance due. Short messages are also printed on your bill in an effort to communicate with you.
Bills are generated from the information that comes from your meter and the number of kilowatt-hours (kWh) you’ve used for a certain period of time. You are able to see at a glance how much your electricity is costing you per day and compare your current billing cycle with last month’s billing cycle, as well as with the same period of time last year. Comparing the kWh used instead of the cost gives you a truer picture of what’s happening with your energy use. A graph on your bill shows you the highest, lowest and average kWh that you used within the past thirteen months. This can help you see trends and understand how lifestyles impact your electric bill.
You can determine your base load by finding the months in the spring and fall when you weren’t running any air conditioning or heating. You are most likely using about the same amount of kWh every month of the year to simply run your appliances, lighting, televisions, computers, etc. The additional kWh used throughout the other months of the year help you understand your seasonal usage, including air conditioning, heating, pools, hot tubs, and watering the lawn.
LaGrange County REMC is a cooperative that is owned by the members who purchase their electric power from us. When someone doesn’t pay their electric bill they are hurting their neighbors and the other members. We try to re-coup the additional cost of labor and vehicle expense with the reconnect charge and trip charges that are listed on your bill under Schedule of Fees.
As you can see, your electric bill not only tells you how much you owe LaGrange County REMC for the power you’ve used each month, it gives you information that can help you understand your energy consumption. If you would like to talk to someone about your bill, please call our office during regular office hours 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.