Rates and Your Service
Tampa Electric is built on a foundation of more than 125 years of providing safe, reliable and affordable energy to homes and businesses across West Central Florida. Today, we are proud to serve about 860,000 customers – including 85,000 businesses – and to deliver electricity with 99.98 percent service reliability. We work year-round to keep your power on while working on important projects that will continue to bring you and your loved ones the service and reliability you deserve, well into the future. Visit our Understanding Your Bill page for additional details, including a video tutorial of your bill.
How Rates Are Set
To ensure fair and reasonable rates for customers, investor-owned utilities, like Tampa Electric, are regulated by the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC). When an electric utility needs to adjust customers' rates, they formally request the adjustment by filing a rate case with the PSC. The PSC then holds public hearings on the proposed changes, allowing customers to voice their concerns and objections to the proposed rates. Ultimately, the PSC has the final say on the amount Tampa Electric can charge customers, and it is based on their examination of the company’s carefully considered costs to provide safe and reliable electric service, including an opportunity to earn a reasonable return on capital investments. Additional information about how the PSC regulates utilities is available at FloridaPSC.com.
Typical Bill Charges
Whether you're going through your household bills or planning the annual budget for your business, you want to know what you’re paying for. To help you better understand what you’re being charged, we’ve compiled a list of terms and definitions for charges included on typical residential and business bills:
The monthly Basic Service Charge is a base rate charge that covers the cost of maintaining your electric meter and the wires that bring electrical service to your home or business. It also covers the cost of reading the meter, maintaining customer records and accounting for bill payments, credit and other transactions. Every customer incurs this charge – even if electricity isn't used during the month.
The monthly Energy Charge includes most of the other costs of producing the electricity you purchase, except fuel. This includes the base rate energy charge and conservation, environmental and capacity cost recovery charges. Base rates make up the Energy Charge for large commercial and industrial customers, and all other charges are listed separately on the billing statement.
The monthly Fuel Charge on your bill reflects the cost of the natural gas we use to generate your electricity. We pass these costs directly to you without any markup or profit to Tampa Electric. The cost of natural gas changes based on what is happening in the energy market, just like the price of gas for your car. When natural gas prices go up or down, your bill will go up or down.
The Storm Protection Charge supports work to strengthen our electrical systems that deliver power to your home or business. These investments will help minimize power outages and reduce power restoration time.
This is a temporary charge to recover storm restoration costs that we already incurred.
A charge to recover costs associated with electric meter upgrades and the closing of certain coal-fueled plants to support Tampa Electric’s transition to a cleaner energy future.
Depending on the programs you participate in, you may see other items on your bill such as Zap Cap Systems®, Renewable Energy (Sun Select or Sun to Go), Outdoor Lighting, Share and others.
Our commitment to you
Tampa Electric understands that some customers are experiencing financial hardship, and we want to help.
Residential Customers
Tampa Electric partners with community agencies that can connect you to resources. We also offer several programs like Share, free energy audits and billing and payment options that can help you manage and reduce your bill.
Business Customers
If you need help paying your electric bill, Tampa Electric has resources to help. We offer flexible payment arrangements, billing and payment options and more energy- and money-saving programs than any other electric utility in the state.
