Imagine if you pulled up to the pump and instead of $4.00 per gallon, there were two or three pages of information detailing what the costs of pumping, transporting, refining, taxes and other costs listed??? You’d be confused, right?
This is what your Electric and Gas bill are – and why so many people seem to get confused and upset when reading theirs. Since most of us do not have real choice in the matter, there are only two numbers that matter – and the most important number is simply one of them divided into the other!
The Numbers are:
The total you pay for the month.
The total in kWh (or therms if gas) that you used.
Do not look at all those other numbers! Here are two real world examples:
You used 191 kWh of electric and your bill was $70.62
70.62/191= you paid about 37 cents per kWh
When it comes to Natural gas, it works in a similar fashion, however the cost per “unit” is higher because gas is measured in a unit which has 30X more energy than electric. Note: “therm” or “ccc” are used interchangeably, both being about 100,000 BTU of energy
In the off-season bill sample we see below, the customer used 17 “units” (therms or ccf) of gas and the bill is $31.37
31.37/17=$1.85 per therm
Any information or discussion after the basic figures is either technical or political/economic. It doesn’t matter what the “name” of the individual charges are – all that matters is the total due divided by the units used.