Ames Electric Department

COA

Electric Department
502 Carroll, Ames, IA 50010

Customer Service
515 Clark Ave., Ames, IA 50010

Phone:
(515) 239-5120
* * * * *

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Electric Rates

How to Calculate Your Electric Costs

General Power (Commercial) Rate   Residential Rate

Large Power Electric Rates

The Large Power rate is available to any non-residential customer whose consumption in any billing period exceeds 10,000 kWh. This rate shall be mandatory for any non-residential customer whose metered demand at any time exceeds 50 Kw. Any customer for whom the Large Power rate became mandatory, who subsequently has metered demand of less than 50 Kw for 12 consecutive months, will again become an optional Large Power customer with a choice between the General Power and Large Power rates. Any customer for whom the Large Power rate is optional shall not switch rates more than once in a period of 12 months. Any customer on the Large Power rate who has a metered demand of less than 50 Kw, and a consumption of less than 10,000 kWh for 12 consecutive months, shall be changed to the General Power rate.

The Large Power electric rate is made up of four components: the customer charge, the demand charge, the energy charge and the energy cost adjustment (ECA).

Customer Charge - The service charge is a fixed fee each month and is also the minimum bill amount. The monthly customer charge for Large Power customers is $41.40.

Demand Charge - The billing demand charge shall be the greater of; a. the current month's demand; b. 75% of the high demand in the previous 4 summer months; or c. 60% of the high demand in the previous 11 months; d. provided that the demand used for billing shall in no case be less than 15 Kw after discounts. The rate is broken up into three blocks with the rate per kilowatt declining with each higher block of consumption. The rate per kilowatt (Kw) is also different for summer and winter:

Energy Charge - The energy charge is the amount you pay for each kilowatt hour (kWh) that you use and is based on the billing demand from above. The rate is broken up into three blocks with the rate per kWh declining with each higher block of consumption. The final billing demand is taken times 200 to arrive at the first kWh energy billing block.  These kWh's are then subtracted from the monthly total.  The billing demand is taken times 200 again and this amount of kWh is billed at the next lower block.  This second amount of kWh's is subtracted from our previous remaining kWh total and any remaining kWh's are billed at the lowest price block.  The rate per kWh is also different for summer and winter:

The summer rate is in effect for utility bills that are mailed on or between July 1 and October 31. This means that the summer rate would normally apply to electricity consumed from June through September. The remaining eight months are billed at the winter rate.

Energy Cost Adjustment (ECA) - The ECA is a component that allows the utility to reflect fluctuations in the cost of fuel for the power plant without frequently changing the standard energy charges shown above. When rates were set in 1987, a base fuel cost was projected. The ECA is simply the difference between actual fuel costs for the past twelve months and the projected base fuel cost. Contracts for coal have increased and this is reflected in the current ECA.  For the month of January, 2008 the ECA was $.0169per kWh.

How to Calculate Your Electric Costs

If an industry consumed 75,000 KWh of energy and 160 Kw of billing demand during the month of May, the electric cost would be calculated using the winter rate from above: