Consider yourself lucky. Here in Central New York
State, my electric bill for December was $95.01 for
745 KWH. That's pretty close to 13 cents per KWH.
The actual 'energy charge' was only $0.0854/KWH, but
added on to that were such things as:
1.) Basic Service Charge, ($13.11), which you pay even if
you don't use anything.
2.) Delivery Charge
3.) Transition Charge
4.) SBC/RPS Charges
5.) Cons Bill Chg.
6.) And of course all of the State and Local taxes.
And naturally, they scatter all of this information
haphazardly over 7 pages and it takes a long time
to get it all together. Don't even think of asking
me to decipher my natural gas part of the bill.
ARRRGH!!).

Go to your electric company's website to figure out what the various charges are for, or look on the bill. The terms can vary from co. to co.

I would guess that "fuel charge" is an extra charge that the regulatory authority allows when oil/natural gas prices are particularly high, and the co. gets to pass those on to you. Basically speaking, most electric bills have a charge for generation (i.e., makign the electricity using coal, oil, gas, nukes, wind, etc.) and transmission (getting it to you over the wires). The generation charges often can fluctuate depending on things like the price of oil).

BTW, the thing to compare is your kilowatt-hours (kwH) on the bills from month to month and year to year (same month). That will give you a better picture of your actual consumption.

7 tons seems a little high for a tad under 3000 SF. What is your location, and what was the tonnage on the units that were replaced?

V

veesubotee....the actual heated area is 2950 sq. ft. When I bought the house back in 1991, there was only a 5 ton ac unit out back and the heat was just strip heat. Well even here in Louisiana, the strip heat alone was running my winter bills up to 400 a month and more. So we replaced the 5 ton ac unit with a 5 ton heat pump. Unfortunetly it only adequately cooled or heated about 75 % of the house. There just wasn't any air flow to back rooms of the house. Hvac company that installed my carrier unit back then tried using dampers and even extra fans in the ductwork, but it didn't help. I could have the stat set at 70 for the main part of the house, but the back end of the house the temp would never get above 64.. It was explained to me that the problem was the design of the house ( contemporary ) 1 and a half story with 18 feet ceilings in part of the house, and that the rooms that weren't getting enough air flow was because the runs from the plenum were "too long and curvy". Finally after freezing my butt off for one winter I just asked the hvac co. what else could be done and they said put in a 2 ton hp. which I did. I have to tell you that when I replaced my carriers back in september ( by the way, those carrier hp's never really did do a good job of heating the house )I was alittle nervous about using the Air Ease 18 seer units, simply because I had never heard of them. But my contractor, who is a personal friend of the family told me that Air Ease was a division of Lennox, and that with the particular models I would be buying, the warranty was 10 years across the board, compressor, parts and labor. So far, we've had several nights down in the mid to low 20's, and just for fun I've set the stat at 74 to see if it would satisfy and low and behold it did.. Took it awhile but it made it.. Normally don't keep my heat 74, just wanted to see if it would make it.. so far the house is much more comfortable with the new units and honeywell vision pro stats..

Roland

Louisiana has cleco....13 cents per kwh and
entergy at 12.8 cents per kwh
thankfully I'm on a co-op utility!! can't complain
at .08 per kwh...
a few years ago I had a huge discussion with one of
the raters who worked for entergy..about fuel adjustment
costs.
took weeks to get an answer..which basically was ..cost of
doing business.
Cost of doing business...ok lets see entergy OWNS the company that produces electricity..so in theory they could sell it to their customers at a cheaper rate..this was the argument in front of the La. PSC.. once psc approved it..what really happened is that the mfg sells to entergy and charges it to customers as peak hour pricing...
even if they bought it at off peak prices.
and wonderful entergy passes this cost off to their captive
rate payers...
gotta love deregulation...( well utility companies love it...even if we don't) what ya gonna do...move???
Louisiana politics..you would have to be here to believe it!