How much are you really paying for electricity?

[George]

They have moved way beyond that. Interestingly enough it is actually fair.

There is an organization called IFTA. If you operate commercial vehicles interstate you file an electronic return with them and they divy the taxes up. You report all of the fuel you bought and where you bought in and the miles your vehicles were driven and where. So say you fill your truck up in Ohio and drive through PA to NJ. PA gets the same taxes as if you bought the fuel there and Ohios only gets the taxes on the fuel used there.

Our former governor was a big proponent of turning all major roads over to the turnpike. The turnpike is a big, giant huge inefficient bureaucracy filled with political appointees. The former governors major justification was that "most trucks driving on I-80 don't pay road use tax to PA" which is very incorrect.

[George]

We have competition here in PA but it didn't amount to anything since all of the "competitors" didn't produce electricity and were simply buying it from our electric utility who has huge excess capacity.

Basically a half dozen resellers popped up and annoyed the crap out of everyone with constant phone calls with pitches of very minor short term savings. Just yesterday we got a form letter from the local electric utility. It is still disingenuous because it is opt out but the letter stated "we are now required to give you written opportunity to ask us not to release your contact information to other suppliers"

[George]

Agree, nothing dishonest or confusing.

What is dishonest and confusing is when someones marketing department pitches "electricity only costs $0.06/kwh so you can recharge the Government Motors obamamobile 2012 for $0.85"

[Edge]

The federal, state, and local governments are always looking for ways to get more of your money. Deregulation of the electric utilities was justified to promote competition and thereby lower your electric bills. This resulted in separate supply and delivery charges. The delivery charge is relatively fixed even if you use no kWh, like a vacation home.

My village supplies water to my house and recently decided to raise the water rates. Deregulation didn't require them to, but I guess they liked the idea of having a fixed fee as a steady source of revenue. So they changed the billing method to include a fixed charge - even if you use no water. To make it better, they shorten the billing cycle from three months to two months. I guess this allows them to collect more of these fixed charges in a year.

I look forward to others adopting this idea. Maybe the next time I go to the gas station, they will not only charge me for the gas, but a parking fee for using their land while I fill up.

[The Daring Dufas]

I have no problem with a fee for paying for infrastructure and having the service available even when the service is not used. Someone has to be paid for hooking up the service and maintaining it. Paying a fee to have your home hooked to the grid makes sense. ^_^

TDD

[George]

Nothing changed on our electric and NG bills regarding a base charge. Both bills always had a base use it or not charge. The only difference is previously the consumption was a single rate. After deregulation the consumption became separate line items.

[George]

For sure, and I also think it wouldn't be unreasonable to pay more if it costs more to provide service. So if you decide to live in a sparsely populated area where there are only a few customers per mile it clearly costs more to install/maintain that infrastructure than it does in a location where say homes are much closer together.

[HeyBub]

Correct. Be aware that state sales tax workers have a background communication channel between themselves. If, during an audit of an Oklahoma business, the auditor discovers the business made significant sales to Company A in Ohio, the auditor makes a note to himself.

Later, the Oklahoma auditor snitches out Company A to his cohort in Ohio. The sales tax entity in Ohio then swoops down on Company A.

Take away: If audited, don't open your records to the auditor. Show him only those invoice copies pertaining to your state. Don't be a rat. (Besides, if your customers ever find out that you were the one who gave them up, your butt's busted.)

[trader4]

The delivery charge sure isn't fixed here in NJ. It's billed per Kwh just like the charge for the energy itself. Don't have a bill in front of me, but the total rate per Kwh is around 18 cents. About half of that is delivery and half is generation. There is also a monthly base charge of a couple bucks.

I also don't think you can attribute today's electric rates here as being higher due to deregulation. Deregulation has allowed us to choose alternate suppliers for generation that are a little lower than the utility. Govt here has tacked on charges that are being used to fund the socialist solar agenda. A few years ago it turned out the state had $100mil that had accumulated in that fund sitting in a bank account, with no clear authority of who was authorized to release it, for what purpose, etc. And they are forcing the utilities to buy an increasing share of energy from renewable sources. Both of those have contributed to raising prices, but those have nothing to do with deregulation and competition.

[The Daring Dufas]

I suppose the costs can be spread out to make it possible for rural areas to be electrified. I think that was the mission of the TVA.

TDD

[krw]

Does K-Y come with that?

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

You seemed to have answered that question yourself. So did the OP. Stated rates are always dishonest AFAIK. I don't seen to have ever received an electric bill that didn't have additional stuff added to it.

I live in one of the few areas where you can't choose, and the rates are lower. This has no effect on what I said earlier (real rates are higher than what they SAY they are).

BTW, I haven't yet figured out who's messing with my sig (removing the newline after my name). It's a file, which has the same line ending there as after all the other lines.

[DerbyDad03]

re: "I don't seen to have ever received an electric bill that didn't have additional stuff added to it."

Take a look at your cell phone bill.

When you have an all-inclusive plan, there's typically one line for the cost of the plan and 47 lines of taxes, fees, kickbacks, tolls and duties.

[John McGaw]

I guess mine is too easy to be true. For electric service there is an $11 'basic service' charge and a $114.46 'electric kWh' charge. The bill I'm looking at shows 1376 kWh used giving a per-kW cost of $0.0832 (or about $0.0912 if you look at it the other way. Pretty cheap compared to most of what I've seen here. Total utility bill for electric, gas, water, and waste was $210.05 on the last one received covering February and the beginning of March for a 2400sf 3BR brick home.

[trader4]

I guess it may be different with your utiltiy. Here in NJ it's seperated into a charge by the Kwh for the energy generation and a charge by the Kwh for the delivery. There is an additonal customer charge of $2.20 per month. None of that seems complicated, hard to understand or dishonest to me.

As for the OP, I believe he is comparing the charge for just the electric generation to the total bill. I'm sure on the bill it's similar to what a lot of us have reported here, the bill today often contains two charges which form the core of the usage. One for the energy generation, one for the delivery to your home. Here it's about 60% for generation and 40% for delivery. And of course if you ignore one of them, then the total bill isn't going to look right.

[T. Keating]

snip..

Percentage wise..

Electricity usage in my corner of South florida has a total tax burden of 15.5%(of the final total).

Meanwhile gasoline @ 4$ a gallon is taxed @federal(18,4 cents per gallon), plus state+local, which normally totals less than 15%.. (62cents)

Thus an EV is paying more tax for it's fuel percentage wise than you are filling up an SUV. The key difference is than 70-80% of the EV's electricity is converted into useful work, while the SUV is less than

10% efficient converting gasoline into useful work.

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

the second one is a better deal if you happen to live in a state that will charge sales tax on internet items

[Ed Pawlowski]

Deregulation spawned a lot of suppliers that are buying in bulk from the same people that used to supply us, re-sell the same power we used to buy and skim off millions of dollars that should be savings in our pockets.

These so called power companies are just a desk, phone, and computer and a big bank account with our money.

[HeyBub]

Good point. Except the sales tax people tax shipping, too.

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

Aw, those republicans are always out to let market forces reduce our cost of living, aren't they?