Understand the High Usage Surcharge

• If you received an email stating you are forecasted to move into a higher pricing level, you still have time to avoid the High Usage Surcharge by checking your current usage and conserving on electricity use before your next bill.
• If your electricity use continues to rise and you exceed four times your Tier 1 Baseline Allowance, you will receive a follow-up email to let you know your account has incurred the High Usage Surcharge.
• You may incur a High Usage Surcharge once per monthly billing cycle and could receive up to two High Usage Alerts per billing cycle. You can unenroll from the High Usage Alerts but it will not exempt you from the charge. To unenroll, log into your account, toggle the High Usage Alert button to "OFF," click "OK," then "Save Changes".
• Run a personalized online rate comparison to find out if you're on the best rate plan for your energy use.

The High Usage Surcharge applies only to customers on Tiered Rate Plans (E-1), (EM), (ES), (ESR) and (ET) who exceed four times their Tier 1 Baseline Allowance.

Each customer on a tiered rate plan has an allowance of electricity that is charged at the lowest possible price; this is called Tier 1 or your Baseline Allowance.

The High Usage Surcharge is applied if a customer uses more than four times their Tier 1 Baseline Allowance in a monthly billing period.

As of March 2017, customers who have incurred the High Usage Surcharge will find the following sections regarding electric charges and tier usage on page 3 of the Energy Statement. Note that the Energy Statement below indicates that a High Usage Surcharge has been applied to this customer’s current bill.

If you have not yet received a High Usage Surcharge, you can review your energy statement and follow these three steps to determine whether you are at risk of incurring the surcharge:

Step 1: Multiply your Tier 1 Allowance by four.

Step 2: Compare the result to your Total Usage.

Step 3: If your Total Usage is close to four times of your Tier 1 Allowance, in future bill cycles you might incur a High Usage Surcharge.

If your Total Usage is four times or more than your Tier 1 Baseline Allowance, you will incur the surcharge.

Sign in to see your energy statement

The surcharge will depend on your amount of usage above four times baseline and the price per kWh.

To help you avoid the surcharge, PG&E offers a variety of useful tips, tools and programs on this page—see above.

*California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) Program gives qualified households deep discounts on their energy bills.