How to Calculate Electricity Bill- The Complete Guide

Ever wondered how your electricity bill is calculated? While most of you may not be much interested in knowing the answer to this, some of you would still want to understand the logic that works behind calculating an electricity bill.

But you would know that to calculate the electricity bill, the meter readings are taken into consideration. In this blog, let’s understand how an electricity bill is calculated using meter readings.

Common Terms Used for Calculating Electricity Bill

Before moving on to the process that is followed while calculating the electricity bill, let’s take a look at some of the important terms used in the process.

You must have often heard of the term, ‘unit’ mentioned around the electricity bill or your electricity consumption. One unit of electricity refers to 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) power. But what does one kilowatt-hour signify?

Imagine you have a 100-watt bulb at your home.

The amount of power used to keep this bulb lit for 10 hours would be equal to 1 unit of electricity.

This means, 100 watts * 10 hours = 1000 watt-hour = 1 kWh = 1 unit power

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Calculate Electricity Bill Online Instantly

Firstly, it is important to note that there is no specific formula to calculate the electricity bill. This is because the charges per unit may differ upon consumption (for example, there would be different charges for the first 200 units and the units above 200).

Now, since we already know what a unit of electric power means, let’s understand how to calculate the electricity bill using meter readings.

You can easily calculate your electricity bill online on the official website of your electricity board. However, not all the boards provide you with the option to calculate your electricity bill online. Here’s how you can do it on the portals that offer this facility.

We have taken the example of Mahadiscom (Maharashtra) to explain the steps-

• Log in to your electricity board’s official site using your credentials
• Visit the ‘Web Self Service section on the website
• Click on ‘Energy Bill Calculator’
• Select your ‘Supply Type’ and ‘Tariff’
• Enter your Sanction Load, Connected Load, Phase and Consumption
• Click on ‘Submit’ to calculate your electricity bill online

Kindly note that the actual process may differ from one board to another but the steps would be similar. All you have to do is navigate to the ‘Bill Calculator’ on your board’s official website, fill in the details and you are done with it.

Calculate Electricity Bill Amount Manually

As an alternative to using the official website of your electricity board, you can calculate your current bill amount easily with the help of your meter readings as well. Take a look at the following steps to understand how you can do so.

Note that we will take SBPDCL as an example of the electricity board here in this case.

• To calculate the power consumption of the current month, you need to subtract the current meter reading from the reading of last month
• Once you know the exact energy consumption, you can calculate the energy charge by multiplying the units by per-unit charges
• Slab-wise energy charges of SBPDCL are – Rs. 4.22 for 1-100 units, Rs. 5.02 for 101-200 units and Rs. 5.87 for 201-300 units
• If you have used 250 units in a month, then your energy charges will be Rs. 1218 (100*4.22 + 100*5.02 + 50*5.87)
• The total energy bill can be calculated by adding the fixed charge of Rs. 40 and the energy duty of Rs. 38 (Rs.0.15 per unit); thus making the total bill amount to be Rs.1296

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Since you would need to know the exact charges per unit power consumption and the additional charges such as Energy Duty, Surcharge, Fixed Charge etc., this method may not provide you with the exact bill amount and might be more complex as compared to doing it online. Considering this, it is better to calculate the electricity bill amount using the official portal of your electricity board.

Conclusion

Now, as seen above, there are two ways of calculating the electricity bill- manually or through online calculators available on the official website of your electricity board. Looking at the required calculations, the manual way of calculating the electricity bill amount can be extensive and hard while the other one is easier and more accurate.

The only problem with calculating EB bills online is finding the electricity bill calculator on the official site of your electricity board. It may be possible that your electricity operator may not provide you with an option to calculate the bill online. In that case, you can do it manually but you will need to know your exact consumption, slab-wise energy charges and additional charges.