New bill format introduced
North Central Electric members’ electric bills have a new look.
Effective November 2009, the redesigned bill clearly shows what it costs to provide electric service to each member.
The new bill, shown below, is divided into two sections—Cooperative Services and Fees and Purchased Power Charges.
The Cooperative Services and Fees section breaks out the local costs the cooperative incurs for distributing power from the substation to the member’s meter. This section includes the basic service charge, the power delivery service and members’ People Fund contribution, if applicable.
The Purchased Power Charges shows the cost of wholesale power purchased from Buckeye Power, the wholesale power supplier to North Central Electric and the 24 other electric cooperatives serving Ohio.
Any load management rate discounts are be shown in this area. If cap-and-trade legislation would be adopted by the federal government, this cost will be shown in this section.
This is the second phase of a two-stage process to update the bills.
In the fall of 2008, the cooperative began to itemize the Basic Service Charge on the bill to provide more information about what it actually costs to have a basic electric service in place. The example shown above shows a service charge of $23. This covers the $21 service charge for residential accounts, plus a $2 meter reading charge for having an automatic meter reading device, or Turtle® meter, on a geothermal system.
The service charge covers the fixed costs of having poles, lines and meters in place. All members pay the basic service charge regardless of how much electricity they consume each month.
By providing more information on the bill, members can evaluate whether it is cost-effective for them to maintain a separate service or if they have multiple services, whether one or more of them should be combined.
The bill below shows the "old bill" (left) that members have seen through Oc tober and the new or "current bill" that members will see with their November billing.
View Enlarged PDF of New Bill
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