Charges on Your Bill with Power Smart Pricing

All residential electric service bills include three main sections:

1. The DS – Residential (DS-1) section will include a Rider PSP – Power Smart Pricing notation, but the charges will be the same for both Power Smart Pricing and the standard residential rate.

2. The Electric Supply section will change from Basic Generation Service (BGS-1) to Real-Time Pricing (RTP-1).  Some of the charges in this section are the same for both Power Smart Pricing and the standard residential rate while others are different or are calculated differently. The following line items will appear on your RTP bill.

• The Market Value Adj and the Rider PER Supply Cost Adj charges will remain the same on RTP-1 and on BGS-1.

• The Summer (or Non-Summer) Energy Charge that appears on the BGS-1 bill will be replaced by two charges: the Day Ahead Energy Charge and the RTP Supplier Charge.

• The Day Ahead Energy Charge will be the sum of your hourly electricity use multiplied by the corresponding hourly prices. You can log in to your account to view details about your hourly electricity usage online.

• The RTP Supplier Charge* covers the costs of the additional services required for providing electricity. This charge typically equals two to five percent of the Day Ahead Energy Charge, except during the summer months, when it increases due to the higher costs of reserving and procuring the energy supply needed to meet the summer peak loads and can be 10 to 25 percent of the Day Ahead Energy Charge. (On BGS-1 bills this charge is incorporated into the Energy Supply Charge.)

Your individual RTP Supplier Charge is based on both market rates and on your individual electricity use during the highest demand hour of the billing period. Since the system peak hour typically occurs between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. on hot afternoons, you can help reduce the impact of the RTP Supplier Charge by continuing to shift your usage to lower priced times. Your high price alerts will make it easier to manage both the RTP Supplier Charge and the Energy Charge portions of your bills.

• The Transmission Service Charge will be calculated slightly differently for the two rates. As a result, some months the charge will be higher for PSP participants and other months it will be higher on the BGS-1 rate.  However the difference is typically less than $0.50 per month. You can reduce your Transmission Service Charge by using energy wisely when electricity demand and prices are high.

• The $2.25 Participation Charge will be added to this section.

• The General Assembly Rate Relief Credit will remain the same.

3. The Taxes section will be the same for both Power Smart Pricing and the standard residential rate.

Your Power Smart Pricing bill also contains some additional information that is not included on the standard BSG (Basic Generation Service) bill. Some of them are used for billing under Power Smart Pricing and some of them are not used at all.

In the METER READING section, Peak kW, Off Peak kW and On Peak kW are artifacts of an earlier billing system and the interval meter reading process, and have no impact on your bill.

In the SUMMARY section, the Customer Dmd (demand) at System Pk (peak) is your usage at the same time Ameren had its system peak (see System Peak Date and System Peak Time) during the billing cycle. The Customer Dmd at System Pk is multiplied by the System Loss Adj Factor, yielding the Customer Coincident Peak. Then this Customer Coincident peak is multiplied by the number of days in the month to yield the kW-day value.

* RTP Supplier Charge is obtained by multiplying the kW-day by the RTP supplier charge rate.