Monthly Service Charge
The monthly service charge for residential and general service members starting January 1st, 2025, will rise to $30.00 per month for basic services.
What is the monthly service charge?
The monthly service charge that Idaho County Light & Power (ICL&P) members pay covers part of the fixed costs of bringing electricity to their location, regardless of how much electricity is used. We are a not-for-profit electric cooperative and work to ensure that each member pays his/her fair share, whether you use a lot of power or a little, use power for all 12 months of the year or for only 3-6 months.
This charge helps recover such things as:
- Having you connected to the electric grid to be able to use power as needed.
- Trucks, wire, transformers, meters and power poles needed to build and maintain the electric distribution system.
- The cost of insurance, interest, and property taxes.
- Pole Inspections and tree trimming
- Certain operating, members services and administrative costs
Our cost-of-service study shows that we would need to charge nearly $70 per month for each meter and then we could sell power at just above cost. However, that amount is not feasible to charge each member, so we collect roughly 42% of our fixed costs through the monthly service charge and the rest of the needed fixed costs are built into the kilo-watt hour (kwh) or usage charges. If we didn’t have a monthly service charge, many seasonal and very low usage members would pay a much lower cost for power and full-time members would have to pay a lot more.
Because all cooperative members benefit from having reliable electric service available when they need it, the monthly service charge allows everyone to pay a share of the basic costs. In other utilities, the charge is also called a system access fee, a monthly base rate, etc.
Members sometimes ask why ICL&P's monthly service charge is higher than neighboring electric utilities like Avista who is currently at $20 per month. It's because of our low member density; ICL&P serves an average of 4 members per mile of line. Compare this to a city or town where the average density is easily more than 30 customers per mile of line. However, ICL&P's average rates remain competitive with those neighboring utilities. In Northern Idaho, our monthly service charge is comparable to many of our neighboring cooperatives, including Clearwater Power who charges $38 per month, Kootenai Electric who is at $32.50 and Northern Lights Electric and Missoula Electric who are currently at $30 per month.
ICL&P serves a diverse membership. Some of our members use a lot of electricity all year long, and some may use a small amount electricity for only one or two months per year. Whether you use a lot or a little, the cost of getting electric power to your location remains the same and that is why your electric bill has two separate charges: the monthly service charge to cover part of the basic costs, and the per kWh charge to collect the remaining fixed costs and cover the cost of power for the actual amount of electricity consumed.
We hope this brief explanation helps answer your questions about the service charge portion of your electric bill. Please call us if you have any billing questions.