Learned an expensive lesson about reading tariff fine print. My client is a cold storage facility in Atlanta on Georgia Power Schedule PLM (Power and Light — Medium). The tariff has an "excess facilities charge" provision buried in the general terms section — not in the rate schedule itself. It says that if the utility installs facilities beyond what is standard for the rate class, the customer pays a monthly excess facilities charge. My client has a dual-feed service configuration that was installed 10 years ago. Georgia Power has been charging $1,850/month in excess facilities charges. I completely missed it during my initial audit because I only read the PLM rate schedule, not the general terms section.
The fine print that cost my client $22,000 — and what I learned
The excess facilities charge is a common gotcha. It's in almost every major utility's tariff but it's always in the general terms, not the rate schedule. The question is whether the charge is correctly calculated. Pull the utility's calculation of the excess facilities charge and verify it against the tariff formula. I've found errors in the calculation itself — the utility charged for facilities that were standard for the service configuration, or they used an outdated cost basis. Also check whether the dual-feed was installed at the customer's request or at the utility's recommendation. If the utility recommended it, you may have grounds to dispute the charge.
This is a valuable lesson for everyone. The general terms and conditions section of the tariff contains provisions that apply across all rate schedules — excess facilities charges, contribution in aid of construction, line extension policies, power factor requirements, and billing adjustment procedures. You must read the general terms section at least once for every utility where you work. It doesn't change often so once you've read it you can focus on rate schedules for new clients. But if you skip it entirely, you'll miss charges like the one that caught you here.
Good news — the excess facilities charge calculation was wrong. Georgia Power was using the installed cost from 2014 without the depreciation credit the tariff requires. The corrected charge should be $1,100/month, not $1,850. That's $750/month in overcharges for the past 3 years — about $27,000 in refund. I missed the charge initially but at least I caught the calculation error. From now on, general terms section is mandatory reading.