RateBlog

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Review: TXU Free Nights & Solar Days plan

TXU’s “Free Nights & Solar Days 18” is the most expensive Time-of-Use electricity plan we currently track, costing the average homeowner nearly double the best fixed-rate plan.

Lately you can’t watch TV for an hour without seeing a commercial for this plan. It touts “free” electricity from 9 p.m. until 6 a..m., with the rest as renewable solar and wind. Together, that’s the trifecta of red flags in our “How to Shop for Electricity in Texas” article. But let’s start with the math…

For simplicity, we took TXU’s own EFL usage and average price claims at face value. Then we compared them to the cheapest 18-month, fixed-rate, 100%-renewable plans on PowerToChoose.org using our RateGrinder tool, including typical month-to-month usage variations:

TXU Free Nights & Solar Days (DFW/Oncor area)
Avg monthly usage (kWh)
500 1000 2000
Average rate (¢/kWh) 15.2 13.7 12.9
18-month cost  $1,368  $2,466  $4,644
 – Lowest-cost fixed-rate competitor  $707  $1,318  $2,544
 = TXU cost premium  $661  $1,148  $2,100
+93% +87% +83%

Like most “free” weekends/nights plans, TXU’s Free Nights & Solar Days jacks up the base rate more than enough to compensate for the free periods. In this case, it’s upwards of 18.5 ¢/kWh after TDU charges. For comparison, the best alternatives above averaged <7.7 ¢/kWh annually. So a house that averages 1000 kWh/month usage would pay an extra $1,148 over 18 months. If you try to change your mind, you’ll encounter a $295 cancellation fee, the highest of any 18-month plan we currently track.

Can savvy consumers make up the difference by deferring their electricity usage until the free periods? Not likely. As the largest electricity retailer in Texas, TXU knows how much their customers use from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Their EFL “average rate” math above already assumes 32.7% is free. Their press release claims “customers on these plans received nearly 40 percent of their energy usage for free”1. But even that extra 7.3% barely dents the 83%+ cost premium.

Think you’re up for deferring YOUR usage enough to come out ahead? It is theoretically possible. Sweltering without air conditioningBut you’ll be plenty hungry waiting in the dark until 9 p.m. to cook canned soup for dinner because you have no fridge or freezer. And without AC your stagnant, algae-filled backyard pool will offer little relief from the Texas heat. Get the picture? Yes, your dishwashing and laundry can be put off until nighttime, but that difference is relatively small. If you really want to do the math on your house’s usage, we’ve posted a tool to help in our “Indexed and Time-of-Use Plans Roundup“.

Finally, TXU has added “Solar Days” to their prior Free Nights offering, via purchases of solar power and solar and wind renewable energy credits (RECs). But as “Green Energy Plans: The Reality” notes, RECs in Texas are sadly too cheap to do much more than boost retailer profits. Perhaps TXU’s “purchases of solar power” include more meaningful Power Purchase Agreements with generators, but that information is lacking. (If so, we welcome TXU to provide details in the comments below.)

Don’t pay the price for marketing gimmicks like Free Nights & Solar Days. To find the lowest cost options for your home, just plug your monthly electricity usages into TPG’s RateGrinder tool. You won’t find a cheaper rate easier anywhere else.

 

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Review: Reliant First Month Free plan

Broken light bulbReliant’s heavily advertised “First Month Free” electricity plan is more expensive than alternatives from other providers and even Reliant themselves.

For comparison, here’s a table of the annual costs of three options at three different average usages:

Annual Electricity Costs (DFW/Oncor area) *
Avg monthly usage (kWh)
500 1000 2000
Reliant “First Month Free”  $657  $1,067  $2,017
 – Lowest-cost competitor plans  $357  $695  $1,656
 = “First Month Free” cost premium  $300   $372   $361
Reliant “Secure 12” (as FYI)  $506   $889   $1,656

Even after rebating the most expensive [August] bill, the “First Month Free” plan costs Dallas residents hundreds extra per year.  (For Houston residents, all the numbers in the table above increase slightly.) While it’s by no means the most expensive plan we’ve seen, TPG recommends numerous options from other providers over Reliant’s “First Month Free” plan. And if you’re set on Reliant, the “Secure 12” plan is currently their best offering for most cases.

To see all the costs and best options for your home, just plug your monthly electricity usages into TPG’s RateGrinder tool. You won’t find a cheaper rate easier anywhere else.

 

Try RateGrinder »

 

* Notes: Calculations are based on the plan EFLs posted on Reliant.com and competitor sites as of 7/30/2017, and assume the 2016 average Texas monthly residential load profile from EIA scaled linearly to each target monthly usage.  Annual cost projections exclude taxes and non-recurring fees.

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Don’t Let Your Electric Plan Expire

Lighted house

Failing to renew your expired Texas electric plan can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year.

Many Retail Electricity Providers (REPs) are notorious for raising your rates when your original contract expires. In many cases, their business model counts on you forgetting to renew so they can quietly move you into an expensive month-to-month “default renewal product”. How expensive? So expensive that you generally won’t find the details online or by calling their customer service reps. These rates are so special that they generally only reveal them once, to comply with PUC requirements, somewhere between 60 and 14 days prior to your contract’s expiration. (Note: At 14 days prior, you can switch providers/plans without incurring an early termination fee.)

We need your help to shed light on this problem. If your fixed rate plan is near or past its expiration, please email us the Electricity Facts Label (EFL) of the default renewal product your retailer will apply if you take no other action. We’ll anonymously add it to the chart below to help other Texans understand the significance of never letting your electric plan expire. And to whomever submits the worst plan (as judged by us), we offer two very special prizes: anonymous fame forever and free personal use of RateGrinder for life!

Of course, after sending us your default renewal details, you should then use RateGrinder to find your better options and save. Signing up with a new provider takes as little as 15 minutes. By law, your new provider will completely manage the switch (you don’t need to inform the old provider) and there’s no risk of electricity loss. Don’t let rate creep happen to you.

We welcome your thoughts in the Comments section below.

Recent Default Renewal Electric Plans

TDU Area Retailer Product ¢/kWh @500 ¢/kWh @1000 ¢/kWh @2000 Issue Date
CNTRPT DISCOUNT POWER Default Renewal Plan 12.5 12.5 12.5 6/15/15
CNTRPT PENNYWISE POWER Wise Buy Monthly 14.6 12.0 11.7 6/1/17
ONCOR PENNYWISE POWER Wise Buy Monthly 14.2 11.7 11.4 6/1/17
CNTRPT RELIANT Reliant Clear Flex Plan 12.7 10.1 9.9 12/15/16
CNTRPT RELIANT Reliant Flex plan 12.1 11.0 10.5 12/15/16
CNTRPT RELIANT Reliant Keep Your Cash Nights & Weekends plan 14.4 13.8 13.5 12/15/16

Source: Electricity Facts Labels variously submitted by TPG users

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Indexed and Time-of-Use Plans Roundup

New for Nov 2019! Texas Power Guide now has a more powerful spreadsheet calculator to compare Time-of-Use electric plans. Download it here for Excel, then paste in your full electricity usage history from SmartMeterTexas.com to see how you’d fare with Griddy, Free Nights, and others.

 

Electricity plans like Reliant Truly Free Weekends, TXU Free Nights, and Griddy all charge based on when you use electricity, but beyond that they’re very different. We do the math to see which are gimmicks and which deliver the goods.

Risk vs. Reward

When shopping for electricity, most consumers choose plans with a “Fixed” rate over the contract term. Such plans offer predictable bills and relatively simple math. In theory, however, they do not offer the lowest cost.

To offer you a fixed rate for a period of time, retailers must first estimate how much they’ll pay for your electricity. The wholesale price of electricity depends on many variables. These include the price of natural gas, weather changes like heat waves, hurricanes, and wind, and consumers’ daily patterns of electricity use. As a result, electricity pricing can vary a lot: from -260% to over +11,000% of the ~2.6 ¢/kWh average just last year. Facing these uncertainties, retailers add safety margin to their cost estimates so they don’t undercharge customers and go bankrupt. The longer the contract, the more uncertainty and risk, so the more they have to add to your rate.

Houston Electricity Price History

To offer lower rates, some retailers create plans that shift some or all of their pricing risks to you. “Indexed” plans base their pricing on underlying market indices like the monthly price of natural gas. “Time-Of-Use” (TOU) plans generally increase their pricing during late afternoon peak use periods. And some plans do both with rates based on the real-time wholesale price of electricity, which changes every 5 minutes. To the extent they transfer pricing variation risk to the consumer, these plans have the potential to offer lower prices. (They’re also more difficult for consumers to quantify, but Texas Power Guide is here to help with that.)Houston Electricty Prices vs Time of Day

Plan Comparison

To see how they stack up, we pitted 9 indexed and/or Time-of-Use plans from PowerToChoose.org and elsewhere against each other. We ran the numbers using the past twelve months of pricing data matched with the actual usage of two Houston-area homes. Home #1 is a 1-story, 2-occupant house with an average consumption of ~1130 kWh/month — about the Texas state average. Home #2 is a 2-story, 4-occupant house with a pool and average consumption of ~2100 kWh/month. Neither home participated in an indexed or TOU plan during the sampling period, so their owners weren’t shifting their normal consumption behavior. We’ll discuss the practicality of doing so in the results.

For comparison, we also included the current best 12-month Fixed rate plan per our RateGrinder tool.  While the best plan from one year ago would make a better comparison, those details weren’t available. Energy prices are slightly higher in 2017 than 2016, which unduly benefits Indexed/TOU plans computed using last year’s pricing.

We did not include plans that PowerToChoose.org categorizes as “Variable”. Unlike Indexed plans tied to a public index, retailers can often change pricing on Variable plans at their sole discretion. Finding details of price histories can also be challenging. As a result, Variable plans don’t meet our threshold for either predictability or transparency.

Per TPG’s philosophy, all our data and calculations are posted here [Note: Newer version available, see top of article.] If you export your home’s usage data from SmartMeterTexas.com, you can paste it into our file to see your own results. We also include historical data on wholesale electricity and natural gas prices to lend insight into the frequency and severity of [usually weather-related] price spikes.

The table below summarizes our results. Time-of-Use plans are in blue. Plans indexed to the monthly price of natural gas are in purple. Plans indexed to real-time (15-minute) electricity pricing are in green.

Results: Indexed and Time-of-Use Plans Comparison
Home #1
(~14 MWh/yr)		 Home #2
(~25 MWh/yr)
Retailer / Plan $/year ¢/kWh $/year ¢/kWh
[Best 12-month Fixed rate plan] $1,002 7.4 $1,881 7.4
Griddy Zero $1,116 8.2 $1,890 7.4
Volt EP Signature Index Plan $1,113 8.2 $2,016 7.9
Champion Energy Free Time-12 $1,173 8.6 $2,135 8.4
Direct Energy Free Power Weekends 12 $1,287 9.5 $2,323 9.2
Reliant Solar Sell Back $1,363 10.0 $2,501 9.9
Reliant PowerTracker $1,411 10.4 $2,535 10.0
TXU Energy MarketEdge $1,499 11.0 $2,698 10.6
Reliant Truly Free Weekends 24 $1,519 11.2 $2,789 11.0
TXU Free Nights 24 (9 p.m.)
TXU Free Nights & Solar Days 18		 $1,861 13.7 $3,368 13.3

Observations

For the average Texas home (~ Home #1), the best 12-month fixed rate undercut the Indexed/TOU options by $114 – $859/yr.

For those with higher usage and a stomach for short-term risk, however, Griddy Energy may be worth a look. New to Texas in April, Griddy’s prepaid daily plan offers the real-time wholesale rate (plus TDU charges) for $9.99/month and 2.9%+30¢/payment. The fees overshadow the wholesale benefit at low or average usages. But above ~2000 kWh/month usage Griddy starts to compete with the better 12-month fixed rates. Griddy also offers the most potential for consumers to shift their consumption for more savings — including occasional negative pricing — with a phone app for real-time pricing, forecasts, and alerts. If you’re willing to assume the risk of pricing disruptions (see first chart, above) in exchange for a lower long-term bill and/or less frequent shopping, Griddy may work for you. That said, Griddy is brand new and TPG hasn’t directly sampled their service, so stay tuned for more. If you have, let us know your experience in the comments.

Beyond that, there’s currently little else in the Houston market worth considering:

Volt EP‘s Signature Index Plan is the other product indexed to the wholesale price of electricity, but on a monthly postpaid basis. With a different fee structure, it is cheaper than Griddy only for lower-than-average usages. Unfortunately, that’s the space where fixed-rate plans outcompete both.

Three “Free Weekends” options from Champion, Direct Energy, and Reliant are nominally Time-of-Use plans, but not in the traditional sense of passing through higher afternoon pricing. Instead, they’re largely marketing tactics to lure customers into higher average rates obscured by trickier math. As such, they are frequently panned on the Internet. Only an extremely weekend-focused consumer might come out ahead of the better fixed-rate options.

The three plans indexed to the NYMEX Natural Gas Futures index also performed poorly, due to their unremarkable pricing.

Finally, TXU‘s identically-priced Free Nights 24 (9 p.m.) and Free Nights & Solar Days 18 plans cripple their usage-shifting potential with a staggering 13+ ¢/kWh average cost, ranking worst in our survey.

Bottom line

For those seeking the lowest cost, a shorter-term fixed-rate product such as those found with our RateGrinder tool is still the best bet. But for risk-tolerant consumers with higher usage or a desire to capture savings by shifting their consumption, Griddy may be a worth a look.

Try RateGrinder »

 

Article updated 8/6/17 to include TXU’s Free Nights & Solar Days 18 plan, which as of that date has identical pricing terms as the Free Nights 24 (9 p.m.) plan.

Article updated 8/7/18 to remove 3-month fixed rate plan comparison data, since the analysis did not capture the total cost of successive 3-month options at seasonally varying pricing.

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Review: TXU Texas Choice 24 plan

electric meter wasted money

TXU Energy’s “Texas Choice 24” is another expensive electricity plan with a cheap gimmick: Cash back rewards that are hopelessly outgunned by an inflated Energy rate.

This week as I was shopping for my own next provider, I received a TXU mail offer loaded with consumer bait: a $350 bonus, 3% cash back rewards, and $150 to escape my current plan. Potentially tempting, but the offer lacked any mention of pricing. Checking TXU.com, it didn’t list “Texas Choice 24” among the plan options for my area.1  So as a last resort I phoned for details as requested (…and quickly, so as not to miss out on the “limited-time offer”).

The TXU rep first congratulated me on catching the $350 bonus level (normally $250?). Then he divulged the current pricing: $9.95/month plus 9.2 ¢/kWh plus Centerpoint’s pass-through $5.47/month and 3.57 ¢/kWh. For the uninitiated, that’s a lot. But what about all the bonus rewards? Let’s check the math for the typical Texas household scaled to various average usages:

Avg monthly usage (kWh)
 TXU Energy Texas Choice 24 500 1000 2000
Average rate (¢/kWh) 15.9 14.3 13.5
Two-year cost $1,896 $3,434  $6,500
  – Cost of cheapest competitor plan – $796 – $1,660 – $3,698
  – Best-case rebates value – $557 – $603 – $695
= TXU cost premium $543 $1,171  $2,107

With it’s 57%-70% higher costs and $295 cancel fee, TPG does not recommend “Texas Choice 24” for anyone. We will, however, include it in our RateGrinder database and calculator for now as a warning and reminder to others of the importance of doing the math. The fact that you took the time to find and read this review makes you a more diligent shopper than most. Next, click below and we’ll help you find the true lowest rates for your home’s usage.

Shop The Easy Way »

1 Note: We eventually found the plan and it’s EFL on TXU.com by substituting a promo code in the URL.

 
October 2020 update: The latest Texas Choice 24 offer — using promo code DMAOCT016S — charges a whopping 9.5 ¢/kWh plus ~4.5 ¢/kWh for Centerpoint delivery. With competitor offers at ~4.9 ¢/kWh plus delivery, just say “no”. See these links for the Centerpoint– and Oncor-area details, or better yet use our RateGrinder tool to find a better plan and start saving today.

 

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Green Energy Plans: The Reality

100% Renewable Power Plans

Form vs. Function

Texans should think twice before paying extra for a “100% renewable” power plan. Despite their green credentials, most do little more than boost retailer profits.

First, some background: Nearly all Texas homes get their electricity from a common grid. At any given moment, that grid is fed by a vast array of both renewable and fossil-fueled generation sources. You can’t physically track or control the path of electrons from a particular source to your house, so in the 1990’s a proxy financial mechanism was created to encourage the development of renewables.

Called Renewable Energy Certificates (or RECs), generators earn one REC for each Megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity they produce from renewable sources. Utilities and retailers then buy these RECs to comply with legislative mandates or to resell them to customers who want to support clean energy. Each REC gives you claim to the green attributes of 1 MWh of certified generation, such as to offset your consumption from the grid. REC prices vary with supply and demand, so more demand theoretically drives higher prices that support the development of more renewable generation.

In Texas, however, REC supply far exceeds the demand by an ever-widening margin, so the incentives no longer work as designed. With wholesale prices below $0.50, voluntary RECs provide neither the necessary funding boost [~$8] nor the long-term commitment needed to finance a new wind or solar project.

And while Texas leads the nation in wind energy production — and soon solar — that green growth is thanks to the Federal PTC and ITC tax credits (which you involuntarily subsidize via your income taxes), NOT your choice of any Retailer’s REC-backed electric plan.

If you’re considering a 100% renewable plan from PowerToChoose.org or elsewhere, ask yourself why. If it’s only to claim your energy consumption is offset by existing green sources, the cheap RECs bundled with those plans nominally do that. But they obscure and undermine a better goal: the growth of new renewable energy. Cheap RECs don’t motivate new construction, a concept known as “additionality”. At best, their ~$0.50/MWh value adds a little gravy to an existing plant’s balance sheet. (They are, however, a great deal for the Retailer if they charged you a $3/MWh premium for your “green” plan.)

If you want to promote renewable energy growth, skip the “100% renewable” power plan. Existing generators, REC brokers, retailers and others who profit from RECs may assert that every REC is a vote for green energy. But at inflated retail prices with no promise of additionality, your dollars are better spent elsewhere.

Alternatives

So what can you do to support renewables growth? Here are some options:

    1. Give Directly.  Rather than wasting dollars on RECs, donate that money directly to organizations that enable fiscally-challenged renewables projects with low overhead. Options include GRID Alternatives, RE-volv, and CollectiveSun.
    2. Shift Your Consumption.  Aligning your electricity usage with the times that wind and solar are producing encourages their development, even if it doesn’t currently displace fossil-fueled sources. Wind blows strongest in the evening and night; solar shines during mid-day.  In the gaps are the peak load times when families wake up and return home, which forces more fossil-fueled generation to kick in to meet the demand. Until energy storage systems become common, rescheduling your dishwasher, laundry, AC, pool filter, etc. to minimize the 3:00-6:00 pm peak plays to renewables’ strengths.
    3. Build Your Own.  While not for everyone, a new rooftop or community solar installation is undeniably “additional”. Prices continue to fall, and it’s easier than ever to weigh your options. See TXSES or Solar United Neighbors for general information and helpful local resources.
    4. Change The Game.  Part of the reason for Texas’s oversupply of RECs is its weak Renewable Portfolio Standard, which was exceeded many years ago. Lobbying for a higher standard could increase mandatory REC demand and take the slack out of the system, but it’s unlikely given recent legislative trends.
    5. Purchase “Forward” RECs.  Unlike the cheap voluntary RECs bundled with most electric plans, “forward” RECs support specific new projects and truly determine their viability. But they are more expensive, of much longer duration, and difficult for individual consumers to buy.

More concerned about carbon emissions in general? Then start with investments to reduce your home’s energy usage. LED lighting, insulation, and smart thermostats are common solutions that typically pay for themselves.

TPG’s RateGrinder tool can filter Texas power plans by their renewable energy content, but we suggest ignoring this feature. If RateGrinder indicates that the cheapest plan for your home is also 100% renewable, then all the better; that provider is clearly competing for your business.

For more on this topic, see here, here, and here.

Did we miss any alternatives? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments.

Find Your Best Plan »

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The Problem with ‘Power To Choose’

Shop Compare Lose

PowerToChoose.org oversimplifies electric plan shopping in a way that is neither effective nor honest. Its superficial search results ignore the hidden rate games that retailers have played for years. As a result, the Texas PUC’s “official and unbiased” site misleads trusting consumers into overpaying by hundreds or thousands of dollars per year.

Consider this example: The average Texas home uses from 840 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in April to 1740 kWh in August, or about 1200 kWh/month annually. For such a home, PowerToChoose lists these 12-month plan options:

Power To Choose default results
Default results from PowerToChoose.org (2/5/2018)

Can you tell the cheapest plan from the one that costs an extra $576? At 1000 kWh/month, all ten plans claim retail rates well below the wholesale price of ~7.5 ¢/kWh. Some users might notice different prices for 500- and 2000- kWh/month and mentally average those three prices over their actual monthly usages. But that approach is futile, and here’s why…

Texas retail electricity providers can define any pricing profile they want in a plan’s Electricity Facts Label (EFL). The EFL must list the price at 500-, 1000-, and 2000 kWh/month, but pricing at any other usage (even 999- or 1001 kWh) can vary wildly. The chart below shows the full rate profiles for the first six plans above. All charge a 3.2 ¢/kWh “teaser” rate in the rare case you use exactly 1000 kWh in a month, which is how they win the search game. But your usage and rate vary each month, which is how they make money.

Example electric plan rate profiles
Rate Profiles for Plans #1 – #6, and Average Texas Monthly Usage

You cannot tell a good plan from an overpriced gimmick from just the three “Price/kWh” numbers on sites like PowerToChoose. Even deciphering the full rate profile often isn’t enough: Outdated delivery charges, non-cumulative charges, non-recurring fees, and partial billing cycles add layers of confusion and expense that are rarely discussed, except by us.

The Right Way

The only effective way to compare plans is to compute your total cost across each of your usages (NOT their average). This means reading the rate terms in each EFL’s fine print and making a spreadsheet. Doing so reveals that Plan #11 — on page 2 of the results — is the cheapest. Plan #9 is close, but the others on the first page cost up to $580 more.

Plan # Annual Cost Amount You’d Overpay
1  $    1,440  $        375 +35%
2  $    1,299  $        234 +22%
3  $    1,590  $        525 +49%
4  $    1,414  $        349 +33%
5  $    1,180  $        115 +11%
6  $    1,116  $          51 +5%
7  $    1,305  $        240 +22%
8  $    1,528  $        463 +43%
9  $    1,069  $             4 +0%
10  $    1,645  $        580 +54%
11  $    1,065  $           – +0%

All of this is arguably more work than countless Texans should have to do to get a competitive electric rate. That’s why we built and maintain Texas Power Guide’s RateGrinder tool to do the heavy lifting for you. Click below to give it a try. By educating and enabling consumers to find their electric plan, we hope you can put the time and money you save to better use.

Try RateGrinder »

 

Although PowerToChoose serves a valuable role as the marketplace for many low cost plans, consumers today have better options. PTC’s crippled search engine and guidance to compare pricing at only 1000 kWh ignore longstanding evidence that such an approach is broken.1 2 As a publicly-funded site with a stated mission to “protect customers”, they have the power to choose to offer a better solution.

This article was updated on 2/7/2018.

Oct ’18 update: After years of neglect, on 8/20/18 the PUC updated PowerToChoose.org to limit the number of plan listings per REP and filter out usage-dependent rates by default. We applaud these changes, as the average PTC user is now less likely to fall victim to gimmicky rates.

However, the changes don’t fix the underlying EFL price disclosure issues noted above, so gimmick rates remain one click away on PowerToChoose, and are still prominently featured on dozens of other shopping websites. Time will tell what, if any, effect the PUC’s changes have on average retail prices, but additional reforms are still needed.

 

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Pass on TXU’s “Season Pass”

TXU’s “Season Pass 24” plan has a catchy gimmick, but it’s nobody’s best deal on electricity.

TXU is the largest Retail Electricity Provider in Texas. Lately, they’ve been heavily advertising their “Season Pass 24” plan on radio and TV. This plan grabs your attention by touting 50% off energy charges in 6 summer and winter months (Jun-Aug and Dec-Feb). Certainly these are among the months when most homes incur their largest energy costs. But is it worth it?

Excerpt from TXU Energy Season Pass 24 EFL
Excerpt from TXU Energy Season Pass 24 EFL, 1/9/2017

With this plan, the EFL’s own disclosures tell most of the story: The lowest average price claimed is a whopping 12.9 ¢/kWh at 2000 kWh/month usage. That’s 70% more than our Oncor-area benchmark of 7.6 ¢/kWh for the same usage. The math for Centerpoint customers is similar. No wonder TXU can afford to advertise so much.

“But what about the half-price months?”, you ask. They’re already included in TXU’s 12.9¢ math. Breaking it down at 2000 kWh usage, the plan actually charges 15.75 ¢/kWh in spring and fall and 10.1 ¢/kWh in summer and winter. (The “50% off” applies to energy charges, but not base or TDU charges.) Even if it were possible to shift all of your annual usage to just those 6 months, 10.1 ¢/kWh is still a hefty 33% premium over many better year-round options.

Season Pass 24 also locks you into a 2-year contract with a sizeable $295 early termination fee. For the “average” Texas home that uses 14 MWh annually, the total Season Pass 2-year cost is $3706. That’s $1500 more than numerous competitive options. Don’t fall for it. Even if you’re set on TXU as your provider, there are better options. You can find and compare the best plans yourself easily with TexasPowerGuide.com’s RateGrinder calculator.

Note: TXU doesn’t list Season Pass 24 on PowerToChoose.org, and the plan doesn’t make TPG’s cut for inclusion in the RateGrinder database.

11/15/2017 update: TXU is ramping up the advertising for “Season Pass” again this winter. The current plan rates are nearly identical to those originally described above, which is to say they’re still very expensive, with or without a $100 gift card. To find better options from TXU and others, click here:

Find Your Best Plan »

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Reliant’s hidden-ish high usage plan

2/16/17 update: PowerToChoose.org, Reliant.com, and third party broker sites now all list “Get More, Save More 12” plans with a newer date (1/18/2017) and higher rates, so we’re removing the 10/28/2016 offerings described below from RateGrinder. Perhaps high-usage households can still get those rates if you call Reliant and negotiate — if so, let us know.

—

1/24/17

Reliant’s best plan for households with high energy demands can’t be found on their website or PowerToChoose.org.

If you use a lot of electricity and search Power To Choose or Reliant’s website, you may find Reliant’s “Get More, Save More 12” plan from early September. For Oncor customers, a 4.9 ¢/kWh energy charge for the first 1000 kWh/month precedes an industry-low 2.4 ¢/kWh thereafter. The latter makes this a good deal for heavy enough users. Yet signing up for this plan would be a $300+/year mistake.

Reliant’s newer (10/28) version of the same plan beats the original by 1.1 ¢/kWh across the board. At 1.3 ¢/kWh, this represents the lowest bulk energy price of any plan we currently track. But you won’t find it by searching PowerToChoose.org or Reliant.com. This version only shows up on various third-party search sites. It’s not common to find the best plans that way, so we called Reliant for details. Their representative validated the newer EFL revision number and offered to sign us up directly at the better rate.

If one scales the average Texas home usage profile, these newer plans are the lowest cost option for Oncor customers if your average monthly usage exceeds ~1920 kWh. For Centerpoint customers the breakpoint is ≥2360 kWh/month. TexasPowerGuide.com recommends you always shop based on your home’s particular month-to-month usage profile, however, using a tool such as our RateGrinder.

Currently, these two “Get More Save More 12” plans are the only options in RateGrinder that don’t originate from PowerToChoose.org. If RateGrinder confirms they are the best fit for your usage, please make sure the EFL revision numbers and other key details you sign up for match the table below. If the deal expires before we notice, please drop us a note to help us update the database for others. Happy hunting!

TDU Area: Oncor Centerpoint
Plan Get More Save More 12
EFL link  EFL (Oncor)  EFL (Centerpoint)
EFL date 10/28/2016
EFL version R1F00110593063a R1F00110593061a
Energy Charge, ≤1000 kWh 3.8 ¢/kWh 4.3 ¢/kWh
Energy Charge, >1000 kWh 1.3 ¢/kWh 1.8 ¢/kWh

 

Find Your Best Plan »

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Welcome to RateBlog

Welcome to RateBlog, the news and outreach forum for TexasPowerGuide.com.  In helping consumers manage their electricity plans, we run across many topics that merit special mention or more in-depth discussion than we can cover in the main website.  With RateBlog, look for us to…

  • Share tips on retail electricity plans — good or bad — that might not be obvious from the RateGrinder database
  • Explore options to save even more money on your energy bills, and…
  • Provide news and information on trends affecting the electricity market

Texas’s deregulated electricity market isn’t perfect, but by sharing information and teaching our friends and neighbors to be active participants we can all help it reach its full potential.

To that end, we invite you to respond and contribute with your comments and/or debate.  We want to keep the conversation productive, so here are a few simple guidelines to be aware of:

  • RateBlog is a public forum, so don’t post anything confidential or private.
  • Articles and comments reflect the personal views of their individual authors, and are not necessarily the views of TexasPowerGuide.com.
  • TexasPowerGuide.com will moderate comments and remove any that are offensive, disrespectful, irrelevant, or spam.
  • We discourage anonymous comments as they don’t facilitate conversation.
  • If you have specific product support questions or feedback, please address those via our ‘Contact Us‘ links, rather than in this forum.

Thanks for reading, visiting, commenting and contributing. We’re excited to have you here!

– The TexasPowerGuide.com team