Electricity (in defense of privatisation)

[Cutlass]

I've found a copy of my electric bill to illustrate what I said above about the distribution company soaking the ratepayer with fees.

My bill for the month was $41.72. Broken down this is:

$15.68 for electricity.
$2.59 transmission charge
$16.00 distributor customer service charge
$4.80 distributor charge per kilowatt hour
$0.22 CTA charge per kilowatt hour
$1.46 FMCC delivery charge
$0.97 Comb public benefit charge

So the total of the delivery charges was higher than the cost of the electricity itself. And that for a company that was cutting it's service budget to the bone.

 

[Arwon]

That's pretty typical actually. It's just how electricity works - energy costs only being about 30%-50% of a retail bill. All those transformers and poles and wires aren't cheap, plus the costs for maintaining sufficient network capacity for peak load moments have to be smeared across all users. Nice that you get it broken down though.

How many kwh did you use? It looks like you're a low energy user - low energy users tend to get stuck cross-subsidising everyone else because peopl with high peak demand push network charges up for everyone, especially where there's regulated tariffs with flat rates.