The Delivery Charge is designed to recover the fixed costs of the co-op necessary to serve the member independent of the energy (kWh) usage. WEC needs to recover these fixed costs even if a member uses 0 KWh. These are costs associated with owning and maintaining poles, wires, transformers, meters, vehicles, equipment, materials, buildings, billing systems, and the crews and employees who keep the system working each and every day.
Here’s an easy analogy to help understand the Delivery Charge: Think of the Delivery Charge as a car in the garage. Most people have a car payment, and the payment you make is a set amount every month. You would pay this amount monthly, regardless of whether you took the car out for a drive or not.
This payment is the same as the Delivery Charge. The fuel that you use to drive the car can be compared to the electricity (kilowatt-hours) that a home uses each month. You can control how much you drive a car, but regardless of whether you drive it across country or just around the block, you still have to make the payment for the cost of owning the car. Having a car and driving a car are two separate costs: the car itself (Delivery Charge) and the gas to drive it (kWh/electric consumption)