Keith Nagel wrote:
I was hoping this discussion would prod some other members to post their costs, I'm curious what others are paying for electricity.
OK, I looked at a recent bill. (This is NSTAR, in the Boston area.)
First thing I notice: No mention of any sliding scale for various usage rates. Either they've discontinued that, or it was on the piece of paper that was sent in with the payment, or they just don't talk about it.
Second thing I notice is that they list the monthly usage for the last 12 months, and they've got just one reading marked as "estimated". They put in some fancy meters a while back and it looks like they've almost stopped doing any estimating at all.
Finally, the breakdown is just a tad complicated. One item is given as a fixed dollar amount; the rest are per kWh:
$6.43 -- "customer charge" -- for the privilege of receiving bills, I suppose.
Then, per kWh:
0.03959 -- distribution charge 0.02346 -- transition charge (thievery to pay for a merger?) 0.00565 -- transmission charge 0.00050 -- renewable energy (WTF??) 0.00250 -- energy conservation (WTFF??)
Then there's one other kWh charge:
0.06868 -- Generation charge, "basic service fixed"
Total seems to be about 14.038 cents/kWh, of which less than half is the cost of generating the electricity; the $6.43 is on top of the kWh-based subtotal.
I _guess_ "renewable energy" is an item that pays for some contruction/investment in windmills or some such and that they've gotten permission to sock everybody with an extra fee on account of it.
I can't imagine what it means that they're charging 0.00250 c/kWh for "conservation".
