Confused by your Rhode Island electric bill? Here's a breakdown of all the charges.

PROVIDENCE – An electric bill can be a confusing thing to read.

You’re not only paying for the energy that powers your TV, fridge or air conditioner. You’re also paying to get all that electricity into your home. And then there are the payments to support state and federal policy initiatives, some of which are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately, Rhode Island Energy, the utility that delivers power to nearly everyone in the state, has put together a few online guides to read your bills . But if you want a more complete explanation of the charges, keep reading.

What your 'supply services' charge pays for

First off, your bill is divided into two main categories: supply services and delivery services.

Supply services cover the cost of the actual energy you use.

Rhode Island Energy charges a fixed rate for supply for most of its customers that’s known as last resort service . It’s the same rate that used to be called the standard offer.

What is the last resort service? It’s what you pay if you haven’t chosen a third-party electric supplier, or if you live in a city or town that provides community aggregation and you haven’t opted out of the program.

But even if you’re getting power from another provider , they’re charging you through Rhode Island Energy. Their rate will be on your bill.

The last resort service rate is adjusted twice a year, once for the period from April 1 to Sept. 30, and a second time for the period between Oct. 1 and March 31.

Regulators do not allow Rhode Island Energy to profit from energy supplies. Whatever the company charges consumers is more or less what it’s paying generators for their electricity. While last resort service rates are regulated, prices from competitive suppliers are not.

The cost of supply services also includes a Renewable Energy Standard charge . Rhode Island requires suppliers to offset a certain percentage of their power with renewable energy annually. Each year, the percentage grows, with a goal of making all supplies renewable by 2033 .

How to read your bill:

Understanding what you pay for supply services is straightforward.

Your bill will show you what the energy charge is in cents-per-kilowatt hour, and will then show you how many kilowatt hours you used in a month. Multiply the two together – which your bill does for you – and the resulting product is what you pay for supply.

What your 'delivery services' charge pays for

Now on to delivery services, which are more complicated.

These traditionally covered only the costs of getting power to consumers , but over time they’ve expanded to include the costs of various energy policy programs.

There are two charges strictly focused on delivery : the transmission and distribution energy charges.

As you’d probably expect, they are the highest of the delivery charges.

The transmission charge covers the cost of getting energy from a generator to Rhode Island Energy’s distribution system.

The distribution charge covers the cost of getting that energy through the distribution system to your home.

It also pays for new wires and poles and other infrastructure improvements, as well as a return on investment for Rhode Island Energy. The charges for delivery services are where the company gets its profit.

Then there’s the transition charge , which is tied to the restructuring of the Rhode Island energy market back in 1996. Deregulation resulted in the termination of long-term contracts with power generators, and Rhode Island Energy is still factoring in the incremental costs of those contracts to this day.

Also under supply services is an energy efficiency charge , which raises money for rebates available to all customers to weatherize their homes, install high-efficiency appliances or take other steps to conserve energy.

There’s also a renewable energy distribution charge that pays for costs associated with net metering, a practice that gives credits to solar, onshore wind and the like, as well as covering the cost of some long-term contracts for renewables, such as power from the Block Island Wind Farm. Rhode Island Energy gets an incentive payment for these contracts.

All of the above charges are calculated based on usage .

Fixed costs on your Rhode Island electricity bill: LIHEAP, Renewable Energy, etc.

There are also fixed costs associated with delivery. They include a fee to support the Renewable Energy Growth Program , which pays for other long-term contracts for renewables developed in Rhode Island.

There is also the LIHEAP enhancement charge , which helps provide money for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. And there’s the customer charge , which covers certain fixed costs, such as meter reading and billing. Finally, customers must pay a gross earnings tax to the state based on usage.

Your bill will add all those charges together – factoring in usage for some of them – to get your total for delivery costs.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Confused by your Rhode Island electric bill? Here's a breakdown of all the charges.