“Free Power 100” is Direct Energy’s latest heavily-advertised “free weekends” rehash. It’s identical to last summer’s “Free Power Weekends 12” plan, except for a bundled $100 Visa gift card and 0.3-0.4 ¢/kWh higher energy rates. As usual, a high weekday energy rate means that overall it costs upwards of 20% more than many competitors. The table below compares the options for customers in DFW, which is the best case. Houston-area premiums are higher.
| Direct Energy “Free Power 100” (DFW/Oncor area) | |||
| Avg monthly usage (kWh) | |||
| 500 | 1000 | 2000 | |
| Average rate (¢/kWh) 1 | 10.1 | 9.3 | 8.8 |
| 12-month cost (after $100 gift card) | $506 | $1,016 | $2,012 |
| – Lowest-cost fixed-rate competitor 2 | $369 | $755 | $1,670 |
| = Direct Energy cost premium | +$137 | +$261 | +$342 |
| +37% | +35% | +20% | |
As a reminder, Direct Energy’s “average rate” claim already assumes 31% of your usage occurs within the “free” period. So unless your electricity usage is extremely weekend-centric, don’t expect you’ll make up the difference. See the previous review for more on why “free weekends” plans generally aren’t a great deal.
To find your true lowest cost electric plan options, click the link below and enter your monthly usages into our RateGrinder tool. There’s no simpler way to save the most on your electric bill!
1 Data from “Electricity Facts label (EFL) Direct Energy Free Power 100 – Indexed Oncor Electric Delivery Service Area 11/7/2017”
2 Competitor data per RateGrinder analysis on 11/15/2017. See Today’s Best Rates for the latest survey of offerings.
I wish you had a plan to let us “Free” Nights users plug our monthly daytime=6am-8pm and nightime 8p-6a kw use in to find the best plan for free nights. The problem is actually that those who offer the plan are trying to overcharge for daytime use instead of helping you to benefit from shifting your usage to the grid’s cheaper rates hours, and passing on the savings from lower grid-rates, which actually helps everyone. We’ve done so for the last 4 or 5 years, and now can’t find a reasonable plan, but the various “creative” ways they choose to offer “free” nights vs Daytime utility+delivery charges and nightime delivery charges is mind-boggling, to compare. Last year, with NewPower, and our well-insulated home, we averaged 11.4 cents/kw; in 2023 we averaged 10.85 with no uncomfortable times. The best plan your Rate Grinder found us is 13.6 average, which is probably going to cost us a lot more if we were to use the hot daytime hours for (less efficient) cooling than using primarily nightime hours.
Hi Tom- Our RateGrinder tool currently does the plan vs. usage math on a monthly basis, but we’re working on upgrades to do 15-minute intervals to cover the types of plans you mention… stay tuned!