Why is my district cooling (Empower) bill so high?

The two-part thing confused me for ages too. Once I realised the fixed charge won't move, I focused on filters + 24°C and my consumption portion dropped noticeably.

For anyone here trying to make sense of why the bill is what it is, there's now a fuller thread breaking down the district-cooling capacity charge vs consumption — i.e. which half of the bill is fixed 'reserved-capacity rent' you can't change and which half (consumption) you actually can cut with servicing and setpoints. Worth a read alongside this one.

Worth drawing a line between two questions that often get mixed up here. Understanding why the bill is built the way it is (the capacity charge plus the consumption split covered above) is one thing. But if your bill actually jumped this month with no real change in how you run the cooling, that is a separate problem with its own checklist: an estimated versus actual meter reading, a possible meter fault, or the wrong contracted tonnage sitting on your account. There is a full walkthrough on how to actually dispute a district-cooling bill that has spiked. So read this thread to understand and trim the bill in general, and read that one if a specific bill looks wrong and you want it rechecked.

Worth understanding before you argue a bill: whether you've got FCUs or an AHU changes what you're even paying for. This AHU vs FCU breakdown sorts out which you have and what should actually be on the service scope. And remember the consumption charge (the BTU metering) is a separate line from the maintenance, people conflate the two and get overbilled on both.