Daily Customer Charge

There are certain fixed costs involved in providing electricity to a home or business. These costs include such things as maintaining substations, poles and lines, meters and meter reading, issuing bills and maintaining records.

The customer charge has been a part of PUD 3's electric rates since 1978. To explain the customer charge, consider the case of a vacation cabin. Even though it is often unoccupied for long periods of time, it still inflicts fixed costs on the PUD. Though power is not being used, the meter is read, the billing processed, and if there’s a storm, the damage to the electrical system is repaired.

If those fixed costs were added to the price of each kilowatt-hour of electricity, the large users (such as electric heat customers) would end up paying for the services used by that cabin. So instead, with the customer charge, those costs are divided evenly among all customers connected to the system. That way, each customer is being charged the full costs of having their home connected to the electric system whether they use power or not.