If your electric bill looks like a puzzle with half the pieces missing, you're in good company. Most commercial bills run several pages, name the same charges three different ways, and bury the number you actually care about. Here's the plain version: almost every commercial bill is made of just three buckets. Learn the buckets, and the bill gets a lot less intimidating.
Bucket 1: Supply — the energy you actually used
Supply is the cost of the electricity itself — what a power plant had to burn, spin, or soak up from the sun to make your kWh. On your bill it might be labeled “generation,” “supply charges,” or “energy.” It's priced per kilowatt-hour, and it's the only bucket you can shop. Your utility sets a default supply rate, but licensed suppliers compete for this line — which is why two identical shops on the same street can pay different supply rates.
In Pennsylvania, the statewide commercial average sits around 13.7 cents per kWh (U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 2026 data) — but averages hide a lot. Your real number depends on your rate class, your contract terms, and how much of that total is supply versus everything else on the bill. Which is exactly why you have to read the lines, not just the total.
Bucket 2: Delivery — getting it to your door
Delivery covers the poles, wires, transformers, and the crews that keep them standing. This is your utility's territory — PECO, PPL, FirstEnergy, whoever owns the lines in your area. The rates are set by regulators, not by competition, and they apply the same to everyone in your rate class. You can't negotiate this bucket, and anyone who says they can is selling you something.
What you can do: know it's there, so you don't blame it on your supply contract — or blame your supply contract on it. When someone quotes you a lower rate, make sure you're comparing supply to supply, not supply to a blended total that includes delivery.
Bucket 3: Demand — the one that ambushes people
Demand is a charge based on your highest 15- or 30-minute burst of usage in the month — measured in kilowatts, not kilowatt-hours. It's the utility's way of billing you for the capacity it has to keep ready for your peak moment.
This is the line that surprises owners. A laundromat that fires every dryer at 9 a.m. Monday can rack up a demand charge from a single bad hour, then pay for that hour all month. Restaurants, auto shops, gyms — any business that runs big equipment all at once is exposed. The fix is usually operational, not technical: stagger start-ups, shift a big load out of your peak window, and know when your peak happens.
Five things to check on your next bill
- Find your supply rate (cents per kWh). Is it fixed, variable, or a default utility rate? If the bill doesn't say, that's a question worth asking.
- Find your contract end date. If it's missing or already passed, you may be on an auto-renewed variable rate.
- Find the demand charge. Compare it month to month — if it's climbing, something operational changed, not the market.
- Add up the line items yourself. If the total doesn't match the bottom line, you found a billing error — it happens more than utilities admit.
- Compare supply to the going rate, not the blended total. A low supply quote means nothing until delivery and demand are held constant.
Why this matters now
We're heading into the part of the year when bills swing the hardest. Heating loads, shorter days, and winter price spikes all stack up — and if your supply contract expires this winter, the default rate you land on could be the most expensive line item you never chose. Five minutes with your bill today, knowing which bucket is which, is the difference between shopping from a position of strength and getting surprised in January.
Not sure what your bill is actually saying?
Send us your latest bill and we'll break down all three buckets — what you're paying, when your contract ends, and whether you're leaving money on the table. Free, no obligation.
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