Powering a Reliable and Sustainable Future: Understanding What You Pay For

Powering a Reliable and Sustainable Future: Understanding What You Pay For

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Tracy Vreeland

Most of us don't think about our power unless we have an outage or when we pay the bill. You know you pay for the power you use, but you may not know exactly what that entails.

Let's break it down:

Customer Charge

The customer charge is a fixed charge unrelated to energy usage. It covers ongoing fixed charges, such as billing, accounting, collections and customer service, as well as some fixed installation and upkeep costs for things including meters, wires and transformers.

Energy Charge

You may be familiar with energy charges, which include usage in kilowatt hours (kWh) for the month multiplied by a per-kWh fee of 9.97 cents/kWh in the non-summer months (October - May) and 11.97 cents/kWh in the summer months (June - September) on the RG rate, which is what most residential customers have. There are other rates and energy charges for businesses and for those who choose to opt in, such as for our electric vehicle customers.

In other words, the energy charge covers the amount of electricity you used that month. The energy charge will vary if you use more or less electricity.

Fuel

The fuel adjustment reflects costs for the price of fuel we use to generate power, such as natural gas and coal, and purchased power. If Santee Cooper's actual costs are less than the base fuel rate, you'll see a credit on your bill. If these costs are more than the base fuel rate, an additional charge will be included on your bill. Typically, the fuel adjustment is recalculated every month based on a rolling three-month average, but it is currently locked as part of a rate freeze that lasts through December 2024.

Demand Sales Adjustment

Santee Cooper plans its generating system with enough capacity to serve its customers' peak load under extreme weather conditions and expected equipment availability. That means we have to generate as much power as our customers are expected to use. As a result, there may be extra generating capacity available for use.

Santee Cooper will sell idle and unused capacity to its large industrial customers or other electric utilities. The fixed portion of these revenues is credited to customers through the demand sales adjustment. (The demand sales adjustment rate is also locked through December 2024.)

Franchise Fee

A franchise fee is a contractual fee Santee Cooper pays to municipalities where we conduct business within their boundaries. This fee is billed each month to customers whose accounts are physically located within the municipality. This rate is 5% of your bill. Twice a year, we give this money back to the municipalities. Many municipalities use this money to reinvest in the grid - by putting power lines underground, for example.

Other Line Items

We recently included an on-peak demand line item to our residential bills. Demand is measured in kilowatts (kW), and it represents the maximum amount of energy you used over a single hour during the peak period each month. It's different than your energy consumption for the billing period. Energy is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh) over the entire time you use it. You can see how much energy you used each month by the chart on your bill or down to the half hour on MEL.

While the vast majority of our residential customers currently aren't charged for demand, it's good to understand what demand is, know your demand, and learn ways to shift your power use to lower demand across the electric system.

Overall, we invest in innovative technologies, renewable energy sources, and energy-efficiency solutions to diversify our energy mix, help our customers save money on their electric bills, and maintain our excellent reliability, which is in the top 2% nationwide. We also have a well-trained and experienced workforce, which improves productivity, safety and customer satisfaction.

We want you to understand where your dollars go, so you are confident we are putting them toward improving the electric grid and enhancing your experience with Santee Cooper.

There's a breakdown of what a bill looks like on our Ways to Pay webpage. If you have a question about your bill, please let us know.

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