AGL pass through (home, water heater, to buy)

[c.zhou57]

Hello folks -

I am wondering what everyone's paying for the AGL pass through? I live in a small 1000 sf home and I am never home. My gas bill is usually about $35 more or less with $15 being AGL pass through and $13 for the water heater (i never cook at home) and a $7 customer service charge. I am thinking this is very high as essentially the service charges triples what I actually pay for gas. I would like to know what some of your experiences are.

Because of this high AGL pass through and customer service charge i'm thinking about going all-electric to avoid these charges. I've run the #s on the government website and the raw energy usage come to be about equal for both of them. However, am I safe to assume there aren't any extra service charges when I switch to all-electric since I already have an electricity provider?

[BGS99]

Is the pass through supposed to be tied to usage?
I thought Ga Power had some type of pass through. I could be wrong.

[BGS99]

It looks like its based on factors unrelated to usage.
I would think all of the providers would pass these along as a pass through.

* AGL Customer Charge: A fixed monthly fee from AGL for gas connection to your home or business.
* Ancillary Service: A charge for AGL to read your meter.
* Dedicated Design Day Capacity (DDDC): A charge that covers costs for AGL to deliver gas to your home or business based on your demand on the system on the coldest day of the year.
* Peaking Service: A charge that covers the fixed cost for AGL to operate company-owned above ground storage facilities for liquefied natural gas and propane operations. This service does not apply to all customers.
* Social Responsibility Fee: A fee that covers the cost for AGL to provide a low-income senior citizen’s discount to eligible customers.
* Environmental Recovery Fee (ERF): A fee that covers expenses related to AGL’s cleanup of former manufactured gas plant sites.
* Pipeline Replacement: A charge that covers the cost for AGL to replace all bare steel and cast iron pipe gas pipelines on their system within Georgia.
* Franchise Recovery Fee (FRF): A charge to cover the fees paid by AGL to local governments for the use of public rights-of-way for its natural gas lines and other facilities.
* Customer Education Fee: A fee to cover the costs for AGL to provide non-biased consumer education pertaining to natural gas deregulation.

[neil0311]

The passthrough is due to the fact the AGL owns the transmission and wholesale capability. These are the fixed costs. Think of it as the same thing as paying UPS to deliver a package that contains something you bought online at Amazon. You pay Amazon for the product (in this case the natural gas from your provider) and the transmission is paid to UPS (in this case AGL).

It's not a perfect analogy, but close. My gripe is the fixed monthly charge of $5.99 that I pay my supplier GNG just for having the good fortune of being able to buy natural gas from them. Add to that my actual usage at the associated per therm cost.

Unfortunately, complete deregulation in utilities is usually not good for consumers. I agree with the free market theories it's based on, but natural gas and electricity are not widgets, and the barriers to entry are very high.

In MA, during the summer, my natuaral gas bill was something like $12, which was what I spent for hot water. No fixed fees or services charges, but of course the flip side was that I paid the price I was charged, no matter what that was, and if I didn't like the provider I had no choice.


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Georgia Public Service Commission