Learning Center

In some ways, a “Regulated” power industry is simple to deal with – they tell you how much you will pay and when your bill will arrive and you either say “okay” or you get yourself a couple of generators or a really complicated treadmill.

All jokes aside…being in a regulated power market means you’re at the mercy of the electricity provider when it comes to rates – you don’t have the power to choose even the slightest aspect of your electricity supply.

If you think the rate is too high or you’d maybe like to see more renewable energy sources, well… sorry. You don’t have many options when you’re in a regulated energy market.

What’s different about Deregulated energy in Texas?

Now, deregulation is a fine thing when it comes to increased market competition, flexibility for the consumer, and giving the consumer the power to choose when it comes to how their power will be generated, but it also means that the Texas power landscape suddenly got a whole lot more complicated!

Before, it was a simple arrangement where one company handled everything: power generation, distribution, and retailing. Now, it’s all fragmented. In Texas, power generation is handled by “these” companies; distribution (the wires and poles) is managed by “those” companies, and the Retail Electric Providers handle the reselling.

Instead of one major corporation handling “Everything Electric”, now you have to know whom to call and when:

For account and billing-related problems, you call your Retail Electric Provider.

TXU Energy, Direct Energy, Reliant, and Green Mountain Energy are examples of well-established Texas power retailers.

For power outages that are affecting the neighborhood, you call your Utility

Oncor Electric Service, Centerpoint Energy, AEP, and Texas New Mexico Power.  Unlike the resale end of things, you have no say in who’s handling the distribution – those areas are fixed, as you can see in this map put out by the Public Utility Commission.

For a power outage that affects your home only, you call an electrician.

Because of deregulation in Texas, power generation and sales have been completely shaken up from end to end.  It’s no longer a matter of paying “the rate”  – you might be on a longer-term, flat-rate contract or, most commonly, you might be on a plan where the rate varies periodically.  There are three general categories of electric plans:

Fixed-rate plans – exactly what it sounds like:  for the duration of your contract, you pay the same rate.  If rates go higher than yours, you save money.  If rates drop lower, you don’t.

• Variable-rate – a variable rate plan changes from month to month based on the cost of generating electricity. You won’t know what you’re paying until the end of the month.  This can lead to a nasty surprise or a pleasant one.  You won’t know until you open the envelope.  The formula used to calculate the rate is crazy-complicated but it will be posted somewhere on your REP’s website or in the documentation.
• Indexed rate plans – this is a variable rate plan on steroids that is rarely available.  If someone is trying to sell you an indexed rate plan, be aware that the price is tied to a commodity – usually natural gas – so prices can really jump around insanely.

Conclusion: Educate yourself and find savings and service

The best way to get into the plan that meets your needs is to educate yourself.  ComparePower is here to help you understand the market and how it impacts your choice when looking for the cheapest light company for your home or business.

I’ll admit it:  during a particularly rough spell in my life, I was forced into a lifestyle my parents would be mortified to discover.  It’s not something a girl likes to admit but … I did it.  It was tough, especially at the beginning.  Walking in my door in the wee hours of the morning, all I wanted was a hot shower to try and wash away the slimy feeling my job left under my skin and every day I woke up to a new shift, I felt another layer of morality burn away.  Yes, I was a telephone Customer Service Representative for a Retail Electric Provider.

Oh, you start with the best of intentions.  You really do believe the hype: “Provide excellent customer service”, “Leave the customer smiling”, “Customer satisfaction is priority one”, and so on.  You make sure your station is gleaming, you diligently sanitize everything at the end of each shift, and you carefully center your child’s school photo right where your eye will rest on it as you comfort, console, and assist your customers (and you truly believe they are “yours”). And then, the day your probation ends, your supervisor, who’d been glowing with compliments over your work, pulls you aside to discuss your call handle average, which really should be no more than three minutes from start to finish by now.

A month later, you couldn’t care less if the customer’s hair caught fire while talking to you and you’ve turned your child’s picture to face the wall so the guilt doesn’t kill you.  You’ve taken to using a “professional” name in case somebody you know calls in and recognizes you and when people ask you what you do for a living, you merely reply “Oh, I do telephone work” and give them a broad wink.  Somehow, it feels less dirty.

One of the things customers are always told is to demand to speak to a supervisor.  Let me tell you why that actually doesn’t work much of the time:  the floor supervisors, in the corporate scheme of things, are little more than glorified reps themselves.  In most cases, they don’t have any more authority than the newest agent in the cube farm and, in a rather astonishing number of cases, if you call back to speak to that supervisor, you’ll be informed by the switchboard that there’s no such person.

We did it all the time:  put the client on hold for a couple of minutes and relax.  Have some coffee, now gone cold.  Check the mani-pedi for chips, maybe use an emery board on a few rough edges.  Just relax.  Then, when you hear the agent next to you is off the line, you whisper “Hey!  Wanna be my supervisor?”  Back to the phone with “Thank you for holding, I have my supervisor on the line.  One moment while I transfer you”, put the phone on hold, pass your headset to the next door neighbor and go put your feet up until the customer has hung up on the “supervisor” in disgust.  That’s assuming you’re not acting as your neighbor’s supervisor!

If you truly want to speak to someone in charge, don’t bother trying to go in through the telephone rep.  Their sphere of influence is severely limited and the main priority is getting you off the line ASAP before you kill their average and possibly get them fired.  Instead, hang up and call the main switchboard and ask to speak with someone by name or position.  Remember:  you are the customer and you are entitled to be treated with competence, with dignity, and with respect.

You wouldn’t blindly sign up for a cell phone plan or a car loan without knowing all the details, would you?  Yet, each and every day, people sign up with a cheap electricity company without fully understanding what it is to which they’ve agreed.  They see the glittering promise of cheap electricity and jump at it like magpies on a shiny pebble only to get hammered with the cold, wet fish of reality when the bill comes in.  ComparePower is an example of a website that provides you with excellent information – but you have to know what it is you’re looking at.  Why is Company A’s rate so much lower than Company B’s?

Here’s what you need to know, neat and sweet, about cheap electricity:  you’re not just paying for the kilowatt hours.   Your Retail Electric Provider will also have other fees and charges you’ll be expected to cover, one way or another.  Your bill might include any or all of the following charges:

• delivery of your electricity
• dropping below a minimum usage
• using certain methods of payment
• accessing telephone customer service
• not having autopay set up
• paper billing
• using renewable energy sources

Now you know why, even though Company A’s rate is so much lower than Company B’s, it still might wind up costing you more.   This holds particularly true if Company B doesn’t charge for what would normally be just part of doing business, such as paying by credit card or requiring a customer service agent to sort out the mess you’ve created by trying to do it yourself online.  When a cheap electricity company advertises incredibly low rates, they’re making up the difference somewhere.  No company starts up business intending to lose money.

Other points to keep in mind:

• Beware of the “vanishing discount” where the heavily-promoted rate turns out to be merely an “introductory offer” that disappears very quickly (even without notice) or else requires a certain usage level.  Make sure you find out when that discount disappears and make a note of it somewhere prominent.
• Ask your friends and relatives if they mind you looking at their electric bill, especially if they say they’re with a cheap electricity company.  If their household and lifestyle are similar to yours, then your bill should be in the same ballpark.  If it is an itemized bill, it will have the per-kilowatt hour; the delivery charge (which might be a flat rate or a blended rate with a flat rate base plus a per-kWh charge); and any line items all neatly spelled out.  If it’s a bundled rate, you’ll just see the aggregate total for the regular monthly charges plus any exceptional line items (such as NSF fees and so on) listed which may or may not apply.
• While researching on ComparePower, read both the facts label and the Terms of Service.  While reading the Terms of Service, if there is mention of a fee or charge but it’s not specifically spelled out, make sure to call and ask. Be honest with yourself about how such fees and charges might impact your bill – if you’re a chronic late payer, a late payment fee that’s double the competition’s is going to be something you want to factor in, as would a fee for payment by credit card if you put everything on plastic.
• Watch out for contract terms – that sexy kilowatt rate might be trying to trap you into a commitment for which you’re not ready.  It’s no good signing up for cheap electricity on a multi-year contract if you know you’re going to be moving in a year and then it’ll cost you to break the contract, cost you to disconnect the service, then cost you again to reconnect at your new home.
• If you are not technologically savvy and frequently need Customer Service assistance, a company that charges to speak to an agent could send your bill over the top very quickly.

Sometimes, the promise of cheap electricity is not the only factor when considering which electric plan to choose. The good thing is that power to choose is yours!  For all the information and some really great tips, visit ComparePower today!

Prior to 2002, electricity plans in Texas fell into one of three categories: the electric company’s way, the way the electric company wanted it, and whatever the electric company said. After deregulation, Public Utility Commission of Texas decided that was too complicated a system, so now REPs have one of three ways they structure their plans, each of which has different contract terms as well as its own advantages and disadvantages.

Fixed Rate

The simplest plan is the Fixed Rate plan – this means that for the entire term of your contract, which is typically a minimum of three months but can go up to 24 months, your rate will not change. This is easy for you because there’s no real guesswork involved – you know what your rate is going to be when you wake up tomorrow and next week and next month right up until your contract term ends. Not so great if the rates drop and you end up paying more than everybody else, though, and of course you’re almost certain not to get the same rate if you re-up your contract. But you never know: you might luck into a lower rate.

Indexed rate

Then there’s the Indexed electric plan. This one can be on a monthly or term basis with a rate that’s calculated by a formula (which they will gladly share with you) with the base being the public index or some other publicly available information. Basically, if your rate is indexed to, say, the price of natural gas (which it often is), then it will go up and down in accordance with the cost of natural gas. The formulas the companies use to determine your rate are simplicity itself, such as this one from a major REP where the price of a kilowatt hour is:

[ Natural Gas Price ] x [ Seasonal Factor ]

+ Energy Charge

+ [ (Monthly charge + Monthly TDSP Meter Surcharge) ]  /  [Monthly bill kWh Use]

____

$$$ Price you pay $$$

As you can see, easily worked out in your head. Maybe. As you have no doubt also noticed, it’s that whole “dependant on the price of natural gas” thing that can sour you on the whole deal: during a recent heat wave, customers on Indexed plans saw their energy price double and even triple,  totally wiping out the great savings they’d enjoyed up to that point.

Variable rate

The third option is the Variable rate plan, the one that surprises you every month: did it go up? Did it go down? According to Schrödinger, only the act of observing can determine a fixed state so, technically, the rate is both higher and lower until you actually look at the bill and collapse the waveform. Isn’t that exciting? All kidding aside, even though the company generally isn’t obligated to notify you of any rate changes, historically the monthly variance has been nowhere near as wild as can happen with Indexed rate plans, so it can be a reasonable compromise between the locked-in stability of the Fixed Rate plan and the volatility of the Indexed plan.

Your power to choose

In Texas, power to choose is yours and it depends, ultimately, on you: your personality, your preferences, and your spending habits. If you’re a conservative type of person who likes to know exactly how much to budget each month, then the Fixed Rate is probably a better one for you. If you’re a devil-may-care, put-the-pedal-to-the-metal type, go ahead and fly with the Indexed plan. If you like a reasonable chance of savings with maybe not quite so much risk, then definitely you might like the Variable rate plan.

Just make sure to visit a site like Compare Power before you make your final selection – you can never go wrong with getting all the information you need for the best decision!

Buying your first new home build is no easy task.  It’s months of inconvenience, annoyance, and slogging through a messy jobsite.  It’s the phone ringing at all hours with nuisance questions.  It’s running back and forth to the site for damage control, decisions, approvals, and inspections and in amongst it all, there’s the signing of check after check.  A good amount of those checks are to cover the cost of on-site power.

Not a lot of first-time new home owners realize that…

Although there is electricity running to the house, the account is not in the home owner’s name – it’s in the builder’s name since, technically, the builder owns the property until you’ve paid him in full.  Another thing a lot of first-time home owners don’t realize is that Houston electricity retailers often give preferred rates to corporate clients like housing contractors.  Like many other producers, Retail Electric Providers like bulk purchases and you can’t get much more bulk purchasing than trucks full of power tools, spot heaters, loud radios, directional lighting, hand tools, battery chargers, and so on!  This means you can’t even gauge how much your electric bill will be based on prior bills because the usage pattern is not typical and, on top of that, you’re probably not going to get the same rate as your builder did.

Finally, that wonderful day comes when you close the deal with the bank and, in turn, receive the keys to your new house and now you’re ready to make the call to have the electricity set up in your own name…  but what’s this??  Suddenly the company wants a deposit because your credit is maxed out!?

Before you make the call that brings your house to life…

Take a few minutes to sit down and do some digging.  Not only do you want to find out exactly which Houston power companies operate in your neighborhood and what it is they have to offer, but you want to find out which are the cheap power companies in Houston.  You’ve just bought a home!  You need to save as much as possible everywhere you can until you can get at least some of the move-in expenses paid down.  Now, while it’s true that most Retail Electric Providers require a deposit if your credit is poor or you haven’t had a utility in your name, not all of them do.  Even with those that do, some will accept a letter of guarantee, where someone else guarantees in writing that they’ll pay the bill if you don’t, in place of a cash deposit.  This can be even more useful once you consider that the typical deposit is 1/5th to 1/6th of an annual bill – if it’s a brand-new home, it might be that the only record of use is that of the construction company and that would be a seriously large deposit, indeed!

Instead of calling each company in turn and having to go through the whole credit application process with each inquiry dragging your credit score and your spirits ever lower, visit ComparePower.  Only the REPs active in your area will be shown and you have access to full disclosure – all the FAQs and all the fine print.  This allows you to create a short list of companies that you can then approach with your application and, if needed, letter of guarantee already in hand.  It’s a more dignified way to get the lights turned on.

There was a time when electricity was electricity.  Like so many other places around America, in Houston, electricity didn’t mean “cheap electricity”.  But you moved into your home and you called the utility and they turned on the power and the bill came in and you paid it every month.  Oh, sure, you might grumble at the amount but then you’d go around and yell at the kids for leaving the lights on and the TV blaring with nobody in the room or maybe you’d look into buying more energy-efficient appliances.  When it came down to it, the Bill was the Bill.  Either you paid the bill or you ate dry packet meals, had cold showers, and watched TV by peering through the neighbor’s window after dark (preferably once they’d turned the TV on).  What’s that?  You want cheap electricity?  Sure thing:  call 1-800-WHO-CARES any time during regular business hours of 2:17am to 3:04am Sundays only.

Then, in 2002, Texas deregulated the electricity market and everybody cheered!  Except that, sure, deregulation opened up the market to competition that may (or may not) have resulted in lower rates, but it introduced a whole host of other issues.  These issues may not have been factors before but now they’re critical when you’re on the look-out for cheap Houston electricity providers.

 1.     Contracts:  Before, there were no contracts.  You signed up or you didn’t.  When it’s the only game in town, you have to play by their rules.  Nowadays, you’ll see these ultra-fabulous rates bandied about but it’s only by carefully scrutinizing the fine print that you’ll discover those wonderful rates come with a one-year lock-down or other catches.

2.     Fraud:  Too many people have been victimized by glib sales reps with promises of cheap electricity flowing in an unending stream only to discover that, as is so often true, “it ain’t necessarily so”.  They’ve been locked into unwanted term contracts or there’s a catch – some utilities will give you the great rate only if you meet a usage minimum; basically, the “rate” is, in actuality, a “bulk purchase” discounted fee – or they paid a deposit never to hear from the rep again.

3.     Customer service:  When the only utility available has lousy customer service, nobody is surprised.  They don’t even pretend to care – they know they have you over a barrel.  With all these new players in town, however, it’s a slap in the face to be treated like royalty until you’ve signed on the dotted line and now they won’t even return your calls or the person on the phone can’t string three English words together or if he does speak English, he’s brand new and panicking trying to pull up your account information.

Keeping on top:  With deregulation, a whole host of electric resellers jumped into the market because there’s a whole lot of electricity to sell:  if Texas were a country, it’d be the 11th largest electricity consumer in the world!  Just by itself, it uses as much electricity as Spain or Great Britain!  That means there’s a whole lot of information you have to find, absorb, and process to make sure you’re getting the best rate for your needs.

There are ways you can keep these factors from landing you in the soup or from remaining trapped in a situation you don’t like:

• Vigilantly reading every term on a sheet of paper before you sign it will prevent you from falling victim to hidden fees, penalties, and usage minimums or limits.
• Not being afraid to say “no thank you” and, again, being vigilant about entering into new agreements will protect you from most fraud.
• Talk to your friends and relatives – find out what electricity reseller they’re using and get the 411 on the customer service and how they’re treated as a customer.

Your most effective weapon, however, is a site like ComparePower (Power to Choose) to locate and compare details from various Houston electricity resellers.  In one fell swoop, you will efficiently and quickly locate and classify cheap electricity resellers all on one page, instead of wasting your valuable time searching out available companies and visiting their websites one by one (who even does that any more?).

Switching Providers is Fast, Easy, and Painless

Many people think that switching electricity providers is more trouble than it’s worth. You may have heard horror stories in the past, rumors of endless paperwork, having to call to disconnect, expensive switching fees, and unexpected power outages. This is simply not the case.

There’s no need to settle for a bad deal. It’s easier than you may think to find the energy plan that’s right for you.

With the deregulation of the electricity market in Houston, there are a number of power companies in the greater metropolitan area competing for your business.

Still, even with all these choices available, you may find yourself stuck in a plan paying more than you care to, afraid that it may be too much of a hassle to switch to a better option.

Compare Electricity Rates in Houston and Switch Providers in Minutes.

If you’re dissatisfied with the amount you’re paying in energy costs every month, there are a few easy steps you can take to find a utility plan that best suits your home or business.

Here’s what you need to know to compare electricity rates in Houston and switch providers today

No “Break-up” Call with your Old Provider:  Your New Provider Will Handle Everything

Switching electricity providers is fast and simple, if you know what to do. The first piece of information you need to know is that your new energy supplier will take care of everything for you.

Many fear the dreaded “break-up” phone call. Who would possibly want to take the time to explain to some customer service representative why you want to move to a better plan? Thankfully, this call is not necessary.

If you wish to switch electricity providers, all you need to do is enroll with your new electric company.  Give some basic personal information, provide the home or business address the plan is for, and select your electric service start date. All you need to do after that is sit back and save.

Of course, finding the right plan in the first place can prove time-consuming. That’s why ComparePower displays all the best plans with the best rates in a standard, easy-to-use platform. You won’t have to search through countless advertisements on dozens of different sites.

ComparePower is a free, unbiased service, listing the the best deals in your area by the most respected and trusted providers. You can easily organize and shop for energy according to your individual preferences.

Your Power Won’t Go Out

There’s no risk in switching providers. If you decide to leave your current energy company to find a better deal, you don’t need to worry about your power suddenly going out.

It’s against the law in Texas for a suppler to shut off a consumer’s electricity simply because they decided to switch.

State lawmakers included this safeguard when they worked to deregulate the energy market. It’s also important to keep in mind that the utility provider you purchase your power from is typically separate from the company that handles the distribution and transmission of the energy from the grid to your home or business. The distribution and transmission utility has no stake as to which supplier you take your business to.

If you use ComparePower to find your best electricity plan, there no catch. There are no hidden fees. No bias.  ComparePower offers a free service to ensure that you’re free to shop around and compare rates with ease and peace of mind.

Your Chance to Switch Electric Companies and Save…

The average user of ComparePower saves more than 25% on electricity costs. Finding a great energy plan should be free, fast, and simple – and now it finally is. Enter your zip code above to compare electricity rates in Houston quickly and easily.