How to Read My Bill

Adjusted Billing: Indicates the original bill was modified or recalculated.

Customer Charge: The prorated charge (using Prorated Charge calculation) for meter reading, billing expenses, customer service, and administrative costs.

Customer Service Guarantee (CSG): A credit issued to a customer if we fail to provide timely, courteous service, respect your property, provide accurate bills, or connect service by the date promised.

Demand: A measure of the customer load connected to the electrical system at any given time. Units are usually described as kW.

Energy Usage Information: The four circles on the front side of the first page of the bill; includes information for both metered and non-metered services.

Average daily cost is the Current Billing Amount / days in billing cycle. 

This includes non-metered costs like area lighting, Cool Savings, water heating credit, etc.

Estimated Billing: Indicates that a meter reading was not obtained, and we estimated a meter reading to calculate bill charges.

Even Monthly Payment (EMP): A projected monthly payment based on the average of your electric bills from the prior 12 months. The actual billing amounts will accumulate as either debits or credits in your EMP balance, and we’ll modify your EMP balance as needed at the 7-month mark and/or annually, depending on your usage.

Facilities Charge: The prorated charge for localized facilities used for service, including transformer and other costs to reach main distribution feeder.

Facilities Charge (associated with kW): The charge for localized facilities used for service, including transformer and other costs to reach the main distribution feeder. This charge is the Max Annual kW (see Max Demand definition, below).

Franchise Fee: The fee we collect on behalf of a municipality for the use of their streets, alleys, and public places, or for any reason required to operate the utility business. After we’ve collected the fee, we remit 100% of this fee back to the municipality.

Interval Billing: Billing data for AMI meters that capture usage in 15-minute intervals. We base the bill on a computation of those intervals in the billing period.

kVAR (Reactive Demand): The reactive component of power we supply for devices that use magnetic circuits to run, like the compressor in your refrigerator or the fan in your furnace.

kWh (kilowatt hour): Electricity consumption represented by the amount of energy used over a given period.

Max Demand: The largest demand registered over the most recent 12 months of billing, adjusted for kVAR.

Metered Demand: The actual demand registered for the billing period indicated on the bill.

Prorated Charge: Fixed monthly charge x 12 months/365 days x days in billing period.

Proration of Seasonal Rates: We prorate the appropriate seasonal rate of your energy usage and, if applicable, demand usage to the billing period in which it was consumed. For customer and fixed charges, we’re computing a daily average price. For consumption-based charges, we’re computing a daily average demand and daily average energy.

Seasonal Residential Service: One-time seasonal fixed charge billed for each meter in addition to the standard rate. The fixed charge is included on the first bill rendered for each season. Service will remain active at the location, and you’ll be billed for no less than four months. If kWh consumed in the non-billed months exceed an average of 200 kWh per month, we’ll remove your account from Seasonal Residential Service.

Seasonal Commercial Service: (MN and SD only) One-time seasonal fixed charge billed for each meter in addition to the standard rate. The fixed charge is included on the first bill rendered for each season. Service will remain active at the location, and you’ll be billed for no less than four months. If kWh consumed in the non-billed months exceed an average of 400 kWh per month, we’ll remove your account from Seasonal Commercial Service.

Seasons: Winter season is October 1 through May 31. Summer season is June 1 through September 30.