The fixed charge on your bill has probably gone up
Almost every residential electricity bill has a line that does not care how much power you used. Utilities call it a customer charge, a basic service charge or a facilities charge. You pay it for being connected, before the first kilowatt-hour.
It is easy to overlook, because it is small next to the energy charges. On the evidence of the filings, it is also the part of the bill that has been climbing.
What the filings show
The national tariff database keeps old filings alongside new ones, which makes it possible to compare the same utility across time. Forty-two utilities have residential tariffs on file from both before 2015 and since 2020. For each one, we took the typical fixed charge across its filings in each period.
- At 35 of the 42, the fixed charge went up. At 5 it went down, and at 2 it stayed the same.
- The median change was $4.95 a month. Measured utility by utility, the median increase was about 30%.
- Across these utilities, the typical fixed charge moved from $13.50 to $20.00 a month.
Today, across the 629 current residential tariffs this site ranks, the median fixed charge is $17.23 a month. More than two in five (44%) charge $20 or more, and about one in seven (15%) charge $30 or more.
Why it matters more than it looks
A fixed charge is the same whether you use 300 kWh a month or 3,000. That makes it a much bigger share of a small bill than of a large one. Across current tariffs, the fixed charge is a median 16% of the annual bill for a household using 500 kWh a month, and 5% for one using 2,000.
So a rising fixed charge falls hardest on the households that use the least: smaller homes, apartments, and anyone who has already cut back. It has three practical consequences.
- Saving energy saves less. Every dollar a utility recovers through the fixed charge instead of the energy charge is a dollar that no amount of conservation can reduce.
- Solar pays back more slowly. Panels offset kilowatt-hours, not the cost of being connected. The fixed charge stays on the bill however much you generate — see why a smaller solar system pays back faster.
- The per-kWh price tells you less. A tariff with a low energy rate can carry a high fixed charge, which is why a fair comparison uses the effective rate: the annual total, fixed charge included, divided by what you use.
Utilities and regulators disagree about how much of a bill should be fixed. The argument for more is that much of the cost of the grid — poles, wires, meters, billing — does not change with how much a household uses. The argument against is that it shifts costs onto light users and weakens the reward for using less. The filings do not settle that debate, but they do show which way it has been going.
How we measured this
- Source: residential tariffs in the OpenEI Utility Rate Database, September 2026 snapshot. Fixed charges filed per day are converted to a monthly figure, as everywhere on this site; the methodology explains how.
- "Typical" is the median fixed charge across a utility's residential filings in each period. Comparing each utility's lowest fixed charge instead gives the same picture: 90% went up, by a median of $5.88.
- Excluded: tariffs flagged as likely data errors, filings that price only part of a bill (delivery without the electricity itself, or a single appliance), and rates open only to some households, such as low-income or electric-vehicle rates. The methodology explains each.
- Limits: these are the filings on record, not a record of what each customer paid. A utility's menu of tariffs changes between periods, and the 42 utilities are the subset with filings in both. Figures are in dollars of the day, not adjusted for inflation.
What to do with this
Find the customer charge on your bill — it is usually listed on its own line near the top of the charges. If you use relatively little electricity, it may be a larger share of what you pay than you expect.
When you compare tariffs, compare the annual total at your own usage rather than the headline rate. The calculator does exactly that, with every fixed charge included.