Terms on Your Bill

The Facility Charge covers the cost of having our equipment available to your business, home, or farm. Even if you do not use any electricity in a given month, your Cooperative incurs costs to have the poles, conductor, transformer, and meter available to you. The Facility Charge is designed to cover those costs. If you are receiving power on our Rate 20: Small General Service or Rate 31: Rural Farm and Residential Service, the amount of your basic Facility Charge depends on the capacity of the transformer that is serving your home.

The Facility Charge is a separate line item found in the Current Service Detail box on your bill. To learn more, visit the Facility Charge & Rate Structure FAQs page or download the brochure.

This charge covers the cost of the kilowatt-hours (kWhs) that you use during the month. Most of our rates are divided into two blocks of kWhs. You pay the most per kWh for the first block of power, and less for the second block. View our rate chart to determine how much you pay for energy (kWh) at your rate.

Depending on your usage the Energy Charge may appears as two line items labeled kWh Charges in the Current Service Detail box on your bill.

Demand Charges are found only on Rate 3: Large Power and Rate 16: Large Power Time-of-Day. Demand, measured in kilowatts, calculates the amount of energy flowing through your equipment at one point in time. The more kilowatts a customer's equipment draws at that one point in time, the larger our equipment (transformer, meter, and wires) must be that serves your home. This charge also reflects the fact that your Cooperative pays a demand charge for the generation of electricity it purchases and for transmitting it to our substations.

If you have a Demand Charge on your bill, it will be the maximum amount of electric current your home used during any 15-minute period of time during the billing month. You will be charged a dollar amount per kilowatt. That maximum reading will appear as the line item Demand Charge in the Current Service Detail box on your bill. To determine the cost of those kilowatts, divide the total Demand Charge by the kilowatt reading or go to the rate chart.

The cost of power can fluctuate from month to month. When our cost of power changes, the Iowa Utilities Commission allows ECI REC (and all other electric utilities) to raise or lower our cost of electricity by using the Energy Cost Adjustment.

The Energy Cost Adjustment is a line item on your bill. The number in parentheses to the right of Energy Cost Adjustment is the amount per kilowatt-hour added to your energy (kWh) charge. The amount to the right of that under Current Charges multiplies this amount by the number of kWhs used during that billing cycle.

If you are leasing one or more outdoor light from ECI REC, the monthly charge will appear on your bill. The monthly charges depend on the type and wattage of the bulb.

Monthly Outdoor Light Service Charges

If you did not pay the total amount of your previous bill, the unpaid amount plus a penalty of 1.5% will appear on your current bill.

The amount of your previous payment appears on your current bill.

To avoid late fees, please pay the total amount due on your electric bill. The payment must be received by ECI by the date indicated.