Carolyn Yeago couldn’t figure it out. The Atlanta-based biomedical scientist is no stranger to complex problems. But one thing she couldn’t figure out was her Georgia Power electric bill.
Yeago has Georgia Power’s Overnight Advantage plan, which is for customers like her who own an electric vehicle or need to charge other batteries. It offers a cheaper rate between 11pm and 7am, giving EV owners an incentive to plug in their cars when demand for electricity is otherwise low. In Georgia Power’s parlance, this period is “super off-peak.” There are also “off-peak” periods (7am to 2pm, then again from 7pm to 11pm) and “peak” periods – the peak time of day when electricity is most expensive. (These three periods only apply from June to September; the rest of the year there are only off-peak and super off-peak periods.)
On a standard Georgia Power residential bill, there is a line titled “Current Service,” which is the main amount and reflects electricity usage during the past billing period, followed by a few lines for various fees and sales tax. “What has me completely confused is how your current service is calculated,” Yeago said. “I multiplied my usage hours by their rate number from the rate plan and added it all up. And that does not equal your current service charge. It is significantly less.”
But the “Current Service” line doesn’t just reflect the rate for time of use. There’s also a “base fee” that’s billed as a set amount per day. So Yeago added that in. “And there’s still a discrepancy,” she said. When you add it all up with the fees and taxes, the amount is less than what’s listed at the bottom of her bill – the one she had to pay.
Her concerns were similar to those raised by other readers to Grist, which is working on a project to demystify energy and electricity policy in Georgia. In conversations with community members in the Atlanta area, Rome, Augusta and Macon, the most common question asked was, “How do I understand my electric bill?”
Here’s a breakdown of all the explicit and implicit costs that make up a typical monthly electric bill for Georgia residents.
Tariff plans
Georgia Power offers seven different tariff plans, including Overnight benefit, FlatBill (a fixed monthly amount, averaged over 12 months) and Intelligent use (which provides customers with an incentive to keep consumption low, for example by not running more than one large household appliance within a 60-minute period).
These are outliers, however. The vast majority of customers sign up for the Residential Service plan, where per-kilowatt-hour rates change on a schedule based on the time of year and—in the summer—your household’s monthly electricity usage. (The first 650 kWh are charged at a set rate, after which costs gradually increase.) Although Yeago’s Overnight Advantage plan is a little different in terms of the breakdown of kWh charges, the rest of this bill is the same as other Residential Service plans, so if you’re a Georgia Power customer, your bill probably looks similar to this one.
Here’s what’s on Carolyn Yeago’s bill:
Carolyn Yeagos Georgia Power bill starting July 2024
CURRENT SERVICE
As Yeago noted, this tariff consists of two main components. One is the monthly base fee – a flat rate of $0.4603 per day that covers the cost of installing and maintaining the meter – and a fee based on household consumption.
However, the “Current Service” line also lists other charges that are not listed separately on the bill – the reason for Yeago’s confusion.
What else is included in the current service?
FUEL COSTS
This is a rider – an additional charge – that is added to the “current performance” line of the monthly electric bill and is not separately reported. By law, Georgia Power is allowed to recoup all fuel costs – coal, natural gas, uranium for nuclear power, etc. Natural gas makes up 48 percent of Georgia Power’s fuel mix. As fuel costs, particularly natural gas, have risen in recent years, this part of customers’ bills has also increased. The fee is charged per kilowatt-hour, with rates varying at different times of the year: it is more from June to September (currently 4.5876 cents per kWh) than from October to May (4.2859 cents). Since this bill is from July, Yeago paid the higher rate; multiplied by her total usage of 1,862 kWh, that would be about $85 of her bill.
DEMAND MANAGEMENT TIMELINE
This amount covers the administrative costs of residential energy efficiency programs. It is calculated as a percentage of the basic bill, i.e. the standing charge plus daily consumption.
COSTS OF COMPLIANCE WITH ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS
According to Georgia Power, this fee is intended to “cover capital costs and the operating and maintenance costs associated with government-mandated environmental costs.” In other words, it covers climate-friendly initiatives mandated by the government, such as exhaust scrubbers at coal-fired power plants; it also covers the cost of cleaning coal ash, a byproduct of combustion. The Public Service Commission has allowed Georgia Power to pass on to customers the cost of cleaning the coal ash that the company is legally required to clean. Currently, environmental compliance costs are calculated at just under 12 percent of the base bill, of which about 17 percent is for cleaning the coal ash, according to the PSC.
REIMBURSEMENT OF NUCLEAR ENERGY CONSTRUCTION COSTS
This fee was added to customer bills to fund the construction of Units 3 and 4 at the controversial Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant near Augusta. This fee was charged from 2011 through spring 2024 and added an average of $4 to $8 to the bill. With these units now in operation, the fee is no longer charged – which is why Yeago’s bill does not include an actual fee despite being a line item. The cost of Units 3 and 4 is now rolled into the current service fee.
MUNICIPAL FRANCHISE FEE
Concession fees are the money that utilities pay to local governments for the use and maintenance of public rights of way, such as streets and other public places. Depending on where they live, Georgia Power customers pay either an within-city-limits fee or an outside-city-limits fee, with the former being slightly higher.
VAT
Georgia imposes a standard 4 percent tax on all retail sales plus any applicable local taxes, which in this case is about an additional 7.4 percent.
By taking all of these different fees into account — especially those included in the “Current Service” line — Carolyn Yeago was able to get much more accurate on the total amount that was reflected on her bill. One of the biggest surprises? The fuel fee. “When I Googled ‘fuel reimbursement,’ all of the articles I found said something like: It costs the average customer $15,” she said. But one of those articles was from early 2023, and fuel costs have risen repeatedly since then: 12 percent in June 2023 alone. Last year, the increased fuel fee added an additional $16 to the average customer’s bill. She knew fuel was part of the bill, Yeago said. “I just didn’t realize how much higher it was.”
In the spring of 2024, those prices prompted some Georgia lawmakers to propose a bill that would require Georgia Power to provide specific fuel price information on customers’ bills, broken down by fuel type: coal, natural gas, nuclear and solar. The company opposed the measure, saying its bills and website already included such data. Still, electricity customers like Yeago say more information wouldn’t be a bad thing. “It’s a big challenge because I feel like if they’re offering all these different plans, they need to give customers the ability to figure out which plan is best for them,” she said.
This was compiled with the support of the Southface Institute, an Atlanta-based sustainability think tank with many Resources for understanding utility payments.
