Question

An electric utility company determines the monthly bill for a residential customer by adding an energy charge of 9.32 cents per kilowatt-hour to its base charge of $18.32 per month. Write an equation for the monthly charge y in terms of x, the number of kilowatt-hours used.

Answer 1

Answer: y = 18.32 + 0.0932x

Explanation:

Given that the base charge per month is $18.32 and the charge per kilowatt-hour is 9.32 cents, which is assigned to the variable x, we can write an equation to find the total monthly charge based on kilowatt-hours.

total = monthly charge + kilowatt-hour x the amount of kilowatts
y = 18.32 + 0.0932x

here we see that y is the total cost per month, our base monthly charge is $18.32, our kilowatt hour charge is 9.32 cents, which we write in terms of dollar amounts for the sake of the equation (just divide by 100), and our variable x represents the number of kilowatts.