Understanding Your Electricity Bill
Direct Energy Regulated Services purchases Electricity on your behalf and supplies it to you at the approved Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) rate. As of June 2004, we bill you for the amount of Electricity you use instead of ATCO Electric Ltd billing you.
Your Electricity bill includes a variety of information, definitions and various charges – we want to help you make better sense of it all. Make sense of your bill with our interactive energy bills, or review the following definitions should you have a specific question.
Administration Fee (Fixed/Variable) – This fee covers the costs related to billing you for electricity and providing customer service.
Cost of Electricity – This charge covers the cost of buying the electricity that you used during the billing period.
Direct Energy Regulated Services Estimated Delivery Charge – In the absence of actual delivery charges for the billing period, these charges are estimated.
Distribution Charge (Fixed/Variable) – This charge recovers the cost of the lower voltage lines that carry electricity from the transformers to your meter.
Energy Used (kWh) – The energy used represents the kilowatt hours of electricity you consumed in the billing period. This can be either an actual or an estimate.
From and To Reads - The “From” and “To” reads are your last actual meter readings.
Local Access Fee – The Local Access Fee is a surcharge levied by your municipality to your distributor. It is approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission pursuant to section 45 of the Municipal Government Act.
Meter Multiplier - For some meters, the actual amount of energy used is too large to be registered and the meter displays a fraction of the actual use. A multiplier is then applied to the difference between your present and previous readings to determine your actual energy use. If there is a multiplier used to calculate your consumption, it will be indicated in the Metering Multiplier box on the bottom portion of your bill.
Meter Number – This is the number attached to the meter installed on your premise.
Rate Rider(s) - This item reflects temporary changes to your bill approved by the Alberta Utilities Commission. It may be a credit or a debit.
Transmission Charge – This charge recovers the costs of owning and operating the high voltage lines that carry electricity to the substation transformers.
Understand how your bill is calculated.
