Defining terms used on your bill.

Avista Utilities began using a new bill format in December, 2007. View how to read your new Avista bill. (PDF: 2 pages, 1.4MB )

What does it all mean? Below are the terms you see on your Avista Utilities bill and what they mean.

Basic Charge - This flat fee is charged to all customers and helps pay the operational costs which allow service to stay available to our customers.

Bill Date - The date our computer printed your bill. Charges and payments processed after that date will appear on your next bill.

Billing Summary - Here, you can see how each part of your bill was calculated to add up to the current amount due.

Consumption - This is the amount of energy used during the current billing cycle. The cost for each kilowatt or therm is listed just to the right of the amount of energy you used.

Credits & Adjustments - Here, you'll see a brief description of every financial transaction made on your account. This will include payments, product purchases, and any corrections.

Read Date - The date that your meter was read.

Kilowatt Hours - We measure the amount of electricity in watt hours. One kilowatt hour equals 1000 watt hours. The kilowatt hours on your bill equal the rate or speed of use (kilowatts) x the length of time electricity was used. Running a 5000 watt (5 kilowatt) dryer for 1 hour uses 5 kilowatt hours of electricity. Burning a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours uses 1 kilowatt hour.

Therms -Your use of gas is billed in units called therms. Therms identify the heating value provided by gas. One therm equals the heating capacity of approximately 100,000 matches.

Multifactor - After your meter is read and the difference between the old and new reads is established, a multifactor is used to convert the difference into use.

• Your gas meter measures gas in cubic feet. We use a multifactor to convert cubic feet into therms. The multifactor varies with the heating value of the gas we provide.
• Each electric meter has its own multifactor. Meters which count each kilowatt hour used have a multifactor of 1. Meters which count kilowatt hours by 10's have a multifactor of 10. Other common electric meter multifactors are 40, 120, and 240.

Estimated Bill - If your bill has been estimated an asterisk will appear by the read for the service that has been estimated and the message "Use estimated - no read obtained," will be printed on your bill. Our estimating procedure takes into account past use, weather conditions, and the number of days that service was provided. If an error is made in estimating ~our bill it will be automatically corrected the next time we actually read your meter.

Prorated Bill - We prorate charges when billing periods are outside the normal 27 to 35 day periods or when rates change during your billing period. If you have questions about a prorated bill please call our office.

Rate Schedules - Your rate schedule determines how much you are charged for each kilowatt hour or therm. We mail out lists and descriptions of our rate schedules once a year or whenever we have a general rate change.

Days of Service - The number of days in your billing period is given on each bill. Most billing cycles run between 27 to 35 days. Because of holidays, etc., the days of service do vary. Keep in mind during cold weather that a few days more or less in a billing cycle will affect your bill.

Average Daily Temperature - This is a total of each day's average temperature for the billing cycle divided by the number of days of service.

Remember, an average daily temperature of 65° F for the entire month may mean that your heating system was running during the colder night-time hours even if the day-time hours were generally warm.

Normally, the size of your heating bill is directly related to the average daily temperature. For instance, a billing cycle with an average daily temperature of 20° may require twice as much heat as a billing cycle with an average daily temperature of 40°.

Project Share - Project Share helps individuals or families who are unable to afford their heating costs because of low income or other hardships. Project Share helps people who have received insufficient aid or cannot obtain aid from government programs or agencies. Avista Utilities supports Project Share through employee, corporate and shareholder donations, and by forwarding donations from our customers to the fund. All the money you donate (either by paying $1, $5 or $ 10 over your billed amount or by giving any amount in cash or check directly to Project Share) goes to help people in need.