Understanding my bill

Your electric bill includes access charges, an Electric Cost Adjustment (ECA) and a capacity charge:

• Access Charges: These recover the costs related to electric lines, power plants, metering and billing systems. Each customer pays a daily access charge and a service access charge based on the amount of electricity they use.
• Electric Cost Adjustment (ECA): This is a periodic rate adjustment that goes toward the cost of the fuel used to generate electricity and purchase renewable energy. When our fuel costs go down, it directly affects your ECA, and we’re able to pass the savings on to you.
• Capacity Charge: This covers the costs of delivering natural gas used for electric generation and payments made to the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) for delivery of purchased hydropower.

On Oct. 1, we started transitioning customers to new Energy Wise Rates, which allow our customers to save on their bills by using electricity during times of lower demand, called "off-peak" hours. 

Under this structure, rates are higher on weekdays from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and during the summer, when it costs more to produce electricity. Rates are lower on weekdays before 5 p.m. and after 9 p.m., including weekends and holidays. [tooltip text="Holidays include: New Year's Day (January 1)Memorial Day (last Monday in May)Independence Day (July 4)Labor Day (first Monday in September)Thanksgiving Day (fourth Thursday in November)Christmas Day (December 25)"]

Your natural gas bill is broken down into four parts:

• Access Charges: These recover costs related to natural gas distribution lines, pipes, metering, and billing systems. Each customer pays a daily access charge and a commodity access charge based on the amount of natural gas they use.
• Gas Cost Adjustment (GCA): This is a periodic rate adjustment that accounts for changes in the price of natural gas. When gas prices drop, we pass the savings directly to you.
• Capacity Charge: This covers the costs of safely and reliably transporting natural gas through pipelines to our community and gas storage costs.
• Colorado Clean Heat Plan Charge: This supports efficiency programs to reduce emissions across the natural gas system as required by Colorado law.

Your water bill consists of two parts:

Water Service Charge: This recovers costs related to water collection, treatment, delivery and billing systems. Service charges do not change based on a customer's usage.

Water Commodity Charge: This is separated into a tiered rate system represented as blocks on your bill. This portion of your bill changes based on your usage. The lowest tier meets basic indoor needs like drinking and bathing. The two tiers above that rate charge higher rates and are designed to discourage households from wasting water.

Our residential wastewater bill is made up of two separate charges, a service charge and a commodity charge. Here's what those mean:

Wastewater Service charge: This pays for maintaining our wastewater collection system and costs related to our billing system, meter reading and our call center. It’s calculated using a fixed daily rate multiplied by the number of days in a billing cycle. Service charges do not change based on a customer's usage.

Wastewater Commodity charge: This charge pays for wastewater treatment and collection center costs. It's normally calculated using your average daily winter usage multiplied by the number of days in a billing cycle. Note: You will be billed less than this amount if your water usage in a billing cycle is less than your winter average.