Electricity rate design

To better understand the potential impacts of rate design for your bill, it’s important to understand the difference between rates and rate design.

What is rate design?

The rate you pay for your electricity covers the cost of providing you with electricity service. That includes everything we do to bring electricity to your home, from buying or generating electricity to sending it along the many power lines, substations and poles in between. Through rates, we collect enough revenue to maintain the safe, reliable grid we all count on every day.

Rate design, on the other hand, determines how rates are structured; that is, how much revenue is collected from each customer class, such as residential or commercial, so that each class is fairly charged for their share of the cost of providing their service. Rate design also determines how rates are structured for each rate class.

Rate design structure

Like most utilities, FortisBC reviews their rate structure periodically to make sure these costs are distributed fairly and submits a rate design application to the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) recommending changes.

Any changes resulting from our rate design application are revenue neutral for FortisBC. That means we collect the same amount of revenue regardless of any changes.

A transparent, regulated process

As a regulated utility, customers can be assured that any changes to our rates or how they are structured are all vetted through a transparent and rigorous public process with the BCUC.

To find out more about the proceedings, visit bcuc.com.