Georgia Electricity Bill Analysis – WABE

This article is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to explain the workings of the Georgia Public Service Commission, a small but influential state-elected board that makes key decisions on everything from raising electricity bills to expanding renewable energy.

Carolyn Yeago couldn’t figure it out. The Atlanta resident is a biomedical scientist and no stranger to complicated problems. But one thing she couldn’t figure out was her Georgia Power bill.

Yeago uses Georgia Power’s Overnight Advantage plan, designed for customers who, like her, own an electric vehicle or have other batteries to charge. It offers a lower rate between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., encouraging EV owners to plug in their cars when demand for electricity is low. In Georgia Power’s jargon, that time period is “super off-peak.” There’s also “off-peak” (from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., then 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.) and “peak” — the peak of the day, when electricity is most expensive. (Those three time periods apply only from June through September; the rest of the year, it’s just off-peak and super off-peak.)

Georgia Power’s standard residential bill includes a “current service” line, which is the main charge that reflects electricity usage during the previous billing period, followed by several lines for miscellaneous fees and sales tax. “What really confused me was actually calculating current service,” Yeago said. “What I was doing was multiplying my hours of use by their rate plan rate and adding that up. And that’s not equal to the current service charge. It’s much lower.”

But the “current service” line doesn’t just reflect a usage rate. There’s also a “base service charge,” billed as a flat daily rate. So Yeago added that. “And there’s still a discrepancy,” she said. Adding it all up with fees and tax, the amount was lower than what was listed at the bottom of her bill — the amount she had to pay.

Her concerns echoed others that readers have expressed to Grist, which is working on a project to demystify energy and electricity policy in Georgia. In conversations with community members across metro Atlanta, in Rome, Augusta and Macon, the most common question was: How do I understand my electric bill?

Below is a breakdown of all the fees, both overt and hidden, that make up a typical monthly electricity bill for Georgia residents.

Rate plans

Georgia Power offers seven different rate plans, including Overnight Advantage, FlatBill (a fixed monthly amount, averaged over a 12-month period) and Smart Usage (which incentivizes customers to reduce their energy use, such as by not using more than one large appliance in a 60-minute period).

But those are the exception. The vast majority of customers sign up for a Residential Service plan, where kilowatt-hour rates change on a schedule based on the season and — in the summer — how much electricity your household uses each month. (The first 650 kWh are billed at a set rate, and then the cost increases gradually.) However, while Yeago’s Overnight Advantage plan differs slightly in the breakdown of the kWh charges, the rest of the bill is the same as other Residential Service plans. So if you’re a Georgia Power customer, your bill probably looks very similar.

Here’s what Carolyn Yeago’s bill says:

Carolyn Yeago’s July 2024 Georgia Power bill (courtesy of Carolyn Yeago)

Current service (85% of total bill)

As Yeago noted, the line consists of two main components. One is a basic monthly fee — a flat rate of $0.4603 per day, which includes meter installation and maintenance costs — plus a fee based on household usage.

However, the “current service” line also includes other charges that are not itemized on the bill, which is a source of confusion for Yeago.

What else is included in the current service?

(Courtesy of Carolyn Yeago)

Fuel fee

This is an “extra charge” — an additional fee — that is included in the overall “current service” line item on your monthly electric bill, rather than being itemized. By law, Georgia Power can recover all of its fuel costs — coal, natural gas, uranium for nuclear power, and so on. Natural gas makes up 48% of Georgia Power’s fuel mix. As fuel costs, particularly natural gas, have risen over the past few years, so has this portion of customers’ bills. The fee is charged on a per-kilowatt-hour basis, with different rates at different times of the year: June through September costs more (currently 4.5876 cents per kWh) than October through May (4.2859 cents). Because this bill is from July, Yeago paid the higher rate; multiplied by her total usage of 1,862 kWh, that would add up to about $85 on her bill.

Demand Management Schedule

This includes the administrative costs associated with home energy efficiency programs. It is priced as a percentage of the base bill—that is, the basic service charge plus daily usage.

Environmental compliance costs (6.6% of total bill)

Georgia Power says the fee is intended to “cover capital, operating, and maintenance costs associated with government environmental costs.” In other words, it covers climate-friendly initiatives mandated by federal order, such as scrubbers at coal-fired power plants; it also covers cleanup costs associated with coal ash, a byproduct of combustion. The Public Service Commission has allowed Georgia Power to pass on the cost of cleaning up coal ash, which is required by law, to customers. Currently, the cost of environmental compliance is calculated at just under 12% of the base bill; about 17% of that goes to cleaning up coal ash, according to the PSC.

Reimbursement of nuclear power plant construction costs (0% of total bill)

It was added to customers’ bills to help finance the construction of Units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle, a controversial nuclear power plant near Augusta. The fee appeared from 2011 through the spring of 2024, and on average added $4 to $8 to a typical bill. Now that those units are in service, the fee is no longer charged — so, despite the item, there’s no actual fee on Yeago’s bill. The costs of Units 3 and 4 are now rolled into the current service charge.

City Franchise Fee (1.1% of total bill)

Franchise fees are money utilities pay local governments for the use and maintenance of public rights-of-way, such as roads and other public spaces. Depending on where they live, Georgia Power customers pay either an in-city fee or an out-of-city fee, with the former being slightly higher.

Sales Tax (7.4% of total bill)
The standard Georgia sales tax of 4% is added to all retail sales, plus any applicable local taxes; in this case, that’s about 7.4%.

Given all of those different fees — especially those included in the “current service” line — Carolyn Yeago could have come much closer to the total that appeared on her bill. One of the biggest surprises? The fuel fee. “When I Googled ‘fuel recovery,’ all 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 increased multiple times since then: by 12% in June 2023 alone. Last year, the higher fuel fee added an extra $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 legislation requiring Georgia Power to provide detailed 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 include that information. Still, billers like Yeago say more information wouldn’t be a bad thing. “It’s such a challenge because I think if they’re going to offer all these different plans, they have to give the customer a way to figure out which plan is best for them,” she said.

Developed with assistance from the Southface Institute, an Atlanta-based sustainability think tank with multiple expert contributors. resources for understanding media payments.