Understanding Your Bill
Bill Breakdown
Cherryland works hard to make sure our member-owners pay competitive rates. Here’s a quick breakdown of the charges you’ll find on your bill:
- Availability Charge: This fixed cost covers everything needed (infrastructure, maintenance, staffing) to make electricity available to you at the flip of a switch.
- Energy Charge: This is where you’re charged for how much energy you use.
- PSCR Adjustment: This charge keeps your bill aligned with what electricity actually costs us. When power supply costs go up or down, the PSCR adjusts so we collect only what we spend — no more, no less.
- MI PA 229-2023 Compliance: This volumetric charge helps us fund the efficiency programs the state requires us to offer. Be sure to take advantage of our energy use programs to make the most out of what you’re contributing!
- MI PA 169-2024 Compliance: This monthly charge is required by the state to fund the Michigan Energy Assistance Program, known as MEAP. MEAP provides support to income qualified households to help avoid energy shutoffs.
What Is a Kilowatt Hour (kWh)?
Let’s start by defining a kilowatt hour. Different devices have different wattages: The average microwave, for example, is between 600 and 1,200 watts. To simplify things, let’s say you own a 1,000 watt microwave. If you cook your frozen meals for 5 minutes, and you eat 12 frozen meals a month, then you’ve used your microwave for an hour in total (you should also probably cut down on frozen meals).
Since your microwave is 1,000 watts, and you’ve used it for one hour, you’ve used 1 kilowatt hour for that month (just multiply the wattage by the number of hours used, then divide by 1000).
Here’s another example: If you run a 1,400-watt window AC unit for 8 hours a day, every day of the month, that will use up about 336 kWh for the month. Here’s the math: You used it for a total of 240 hours that month, because 8 hours a day x 30 days = 240. So, multiply the wattage (1,400) by the number of hours used (240), and then divide that by 1,000. Voila! Your AC unit cost you 336 kWh.
Usage
Previous and Present: Most meters keep track of kilowatt hours used with a register that counts in ascending order, until it reaches 99,999 (at that point, it resets). So we just get your actual kWh used by subtracting “previous” from “present.”
Energy Charge: Simply, this is the charge based on how much energy you use.
Power Supply Cost Recovery (PSCR): In the energy industry, financial conditions surrounding power supply can change at the drop of a hat. So while we try to be as accurate as possible with our supply costs every year, sometimes we’re a little off. That’s when we need to adjust our PSCR, because as a non-profit, we’re not allowed to collect more or less than our actual cost of energy.
What Influences Our Rates?
Cherryland is a not-for-profit electric cooperative. That means our goal isn’t to generate profit, it’s to serve our members. We set rates to cover what it takes to operate and maintain our system, deliver reliable electricity, and provide the services members count on and nothing more. When costs come in lower than expected, those margins are returned to members through Capital Credits.
We know members care about where their money goes — and so do we. That’s why we’re sharing more about how rates are built, what can cause adjustments, and the outside factors that influence costs.
What’s Driving Costs?
Keeping the lights on takes more than electricity — it takes poles, wire, transformers, technology, and the crews who maintain it all. In recent years, the cost of those essentials has gone up. Since 2020, underground wire prices have increased by about 60%, and transformer costs have more than doubled. These aren’t upgrades; they’re the foundation of reliable service.
Recent changes to state law are also affecting the charges you see on your bill, including the $1.25 MEAP charge and an Energy Waste Reduction surcharge of about $2.25 per month. These are compliance costs, not profit drivers. We regularly do a careful review of our expenses and only adjust rates when necessary.
Why The Recent Rate Adjustments?
Everyone is feeling cost pressures right now — utilities included.
At Cherryland, our job is to balance affordability with reliability. Because our members are also our owners, we don’t take adjusting rates lightly. When rates do change, it’s because the cost of delivering safe, reliable power has increased. Since 2020, the average residential bill for a 700 kWh member has increased from about $107 to roughly $128. That’s around a 3% average annual increase, slightly lower than inflation during that same period.
What’s Included in Your Electric Bill?
Cherryland members experience less than 60 minutes without power in a typical year. The average Michigander experiences outages nearly three times longer. Your monthly bill helps us make the ongoing investments required to maintain that level of reliability.
When you look at your electric bill, you’re not just paying for energy. You’re paying for 24/7 reliability, storm response, energy programs, and a utility owned by the people it serves.
