Reading your Entergy Bill

The Alliance for Affordable Energy says:

 

Your bill will not have all of the charges listed below. Each company has different ways of charging but this is a pretty good list to start with!

Customer Charge: Fixed part of customer's bill, regardless of energy usage.  The charge covers maintenance of service lines, customer's meters, and service locations. For residential, it is between $7-8/month regardless of your energy use.

Fuel Adjustment fee: The cost that it took to make the energy that you used. This includes the cost of fuel (natural gas, coal, etc) and the cost of transporting that stuff to the power plant (barges, trains, etc).

Energy Charge or Base Rate Charge: Non-fuel costs of providing electricity, including cost of wires, poles, power plants, and service trucks. The total amount of money needed to provide these services is divided up among all bill-payers and we pay for the portion based on the amount of energy we used.

Municipal Franchise Fee: This reflects fees charged by municipalities for municipally owned electric lines and infrastructure.

Louisiana PSC Case Credit/Charge: This may be either a credit or charge tied to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order that balances the production costs of all Entergy's Operating Companies in Louisiana. The credits and charges equalize production costs from one Entergy service provider to the Entergy family of companies. They are based on the prior year and appear on bills from June through December.

LURC Hurricane Charges: This is your utility company insurance plan. Insurance companies refuse to insure storm vulnerable areas like South Louisiana. Hence, the Public Service Commission authorized the Louisiana Utilities Restoration Corporation (LURC) sold bonds for Entergy to pay for system restoration costs after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Gustav in 2008. Customers will pay fees on 2005 bonds until 2018 and 2008 bonds until 2022. 

Storm Reserve Rider: The Storm Reserve Rider is similar to the LURC but allows Entergy to charge customers upfront for costs expected to be incurred due to storm damage. The Storm Reserve is capped at $75 million.

Federal Mandated EAC Rider: This charge is federally mandated to comply with the EPA's Clean Air Interstate Rules that reduce and cap asthma-causing air pollutants including nitrous oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2).

kWh(kiloWatt hour) Metered: This number reflects the amount of energy you used in a month. This is how the utility knows what to charge you. See chart below for how you can spend a kWh:

 

Device	Wattage	Hours used	kWh
medium window-unit AC	1000 watts	one hour	1 kWh
large window-unit AC	1500 watts	one hour	1.5 kWh
small window-unit AC	500 watts	one hour	0.5 kWh
42" ceiling fan on low speed	24 watts	ten hours	0.24 kWh
light bulb	100 watts	730 hours (i.e., all month)	73 kWh
CFL light bulb	25 watts	730 hours	18 kWh

To figure out how much a device will cost you use this formula:

wattage   x   hours used  ÷  1000  x  price per kWh  =   $ cost of electricity