Your natural gas bill from WPS provides detailed
information about your natural gas costs. It's designed to help you make
wise decisions and manage your energy costs in the future.
Billing terms
Understanding these terms that may appear on your bill is a first step in
understanding your gas costs:
- Aggregation charge
- All gas transportation customers served by
WPS are able to deliver gas to any of our gate stations, or
"pool across" our entire gas distribution system. This ability results
from a contract we have with the interstate pipelines to serve our firm and interruptible
system customers. To cover the cost of this pooling benefit received by gas
transportation customers, WPS applies an aggregation charge per
therm to all transportation gas through-put crossing gate stations.
Because of significant cross-connections behind some WPS
gate stations, seven sets of gate stations are considered single gate
stations for this purpose:
- Green Bay and West Green Bay
- Merrill and North Merrill
- Oshkosh and South Oshkosh
- Sheboygan and North Sheboygan
- Stevens Point and Rosholt
- Manitowoc and North Manitowoc
- South Wausau, Wausau and North Wausau
- Base gas cost
- Covers the estimated cost of gas, gas supply reliability
and balancing services for firm and interruptible customers. It also includes
the cost to contract for adequate pipeline capacity and storage for firm
customers. The Commission approves estimated costs for these services. The
annual estimated costs are spread out evenly over 12 months.
- Demand Charge
- A variable charged based on your daily through-put.
It covers utility expenses and return on investment associated with natural
gas distribution service.
- Distribution margin
- A variable charge based on the therms you've
used, your annual usage and type of service. It covers utility expenses and
return on investment associated with natural gas distribution service.
- Fixed Charge
- Helps cover the cost of equipment used to serve
customers, issue bills and provide customer service programs.
- Gas adjustment
- Adjusts the Base Gas Rate to reflect monthly
fluctuations in the direct charges paid by WPS for gas supply, pipeline
capacity and other related costs. The Commission approves these charges.
- Gas supply acquisition
- Covers the costs associated with
buying gas, such as the carrying cost of gas in storage, wages of the
WPS gas supply group, and so on.
- Local distribution service
- Covers the safe, reliable
transportation of gas across the WPS gas distribution
system to customers, including metering, billing and customer service.
It includes both fixed and volumetric charges to more accurately match
the actual costs of providing these services. Fixed charges do not vary
with your use; volumetric charges will vary with your gas use.
- Pressure base correction and company use gas / gas lost and unaccounted for
- Before calculating your daily nominations,
WPS applies an adjustment factor to gas
delivered to the city gate station for your use. This factor is the
product of a Pressure Base Correction (to adjust for the
different gas measurement assumptions WPS and the interstate pipelines
use) and a correction for Company Use Gas / Gas Lost and
Unaccounted For (gas used during the distribution process and gas
that flows into the WPS distribution system but is never
metered as being used by a customer or the utility). The current effective "Pressure Base
Correction and Company Use Gas/Gas Lost and Unaccounted For" factors can be found on
sheet number G8.07 of Schedule PGAC in the
WPS Wisconsin rate book.
