Fees for consumers have doubled on Calgary utility bills since 2010

Electricity rates aren't the only item going up on the power bills. 

Number crunching by CBC Calgary has found the fees customers pay for the provincewide gas and power infrastructure climbed steadily over the past decade.

In particular, rates for access to the electrical grid and back alley power lines have more than doubled since 2010, when the province embarked on an effort to modernize and beef up the system. That hasn't gone unnoticed.

Customers are frustrated and ticked off at these add-ons — which appear with little explanation and can add up to more than the cost of the energy used.

It was one of the most common complaints mentioned by the nearly 800 people now signed up in CBC Calgary's texting community. 

"It has all these extra charges — distribution charges, transmission charges … a whole bunch of things in there that I have no visibility of in terms of what they are. And I have no control over them," said Shakeel Ahmed, who followed up on his text message with an interview. 

A recent Enmax bill was $165 for electricity. Only $65 of that was for energy used. 

"My concern is, what's the regulation? Can the companies keep increasing fees and I can't do anything about it? I can control my consumption, yes. But really in that bill, the consumption is the smallest element of this, and the same thing goes for my gas bills."

Acting on what we heard, our first step was to figure out how those fees are even calculated. They can look like fixed amounts on the bill but they're actually per day and per unit fees. The rates are buried in pdf documents deep inside each company's website.

We looked at those from Enmax and ATCO, the two companies with monopolies on distributing the electricity and gas to houses in Calgary (even if you buy power through a different retailer).

The electricity fees are listed as distribution, transmission and a rate rider — basically, the wires and such in the city, the high power transmission equipment across the province, and the special temporary fees that get added on when companies realize they over or under estimated how much a capital build would cost. 

The combined per kWh rate increased to 5.3 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) in January 2022, from 2.4 cents per kWh in January 2010. 

The per day fee also went up. It's at 59 cents now, up from 32 cents in 2010.

From what we've seen in Calgary bills, the amount people pay varies widely, as does how much electricity they use. But provincial bodies say the average household uses 600 kWh per month, which means a fee of under $50.