TXU Energy Live Your Free ....or die when you receive the high energy bill!

TXU Energy has put the lipstick on the pig with their Live Your Free campaign. They have repackaged their Free Nights plan into the Live Your Free plan.

The bottom line is that you will pay too much for electricity if you choose the Live Your Free or Free Nights/Weekends plan.

The Live Your Free plan sounds appealing because TXU says they will give you the lowest cost each month between three different options: (1) Free energy during the day from 10am-5pm, (2) Free energy from 9pm-5am, or (2) Free energy over the weekend from Friday 7pm through Sunday midnight. But it is more important to understand what they don’t say in their marketing. The cost of the electricity during the other times is about 3 times the cost of the current lowest cost plans.

With the Live Your Free plan, you can only save if you use 70% or more of your electricity during the free periods. This simply isn’t realistic. The possible exception is for those who have a weekend only house and they cut off the A/C during the week.

Energy companies like TXU are not in the business to give you anything for free. As a general rule, energy companies spend marketing dollars on plans that make them the most money. They do not spend marketing money on plans that are good for their customers.

Let’s take a look at some data. We reviewed a year of hourly electricity usage data for one of our recent customers in Dallas, and here is how the TXU Live Your Free 12 plan stacked up against the lowest cost 12 month plan Energy Choice Experts found in August 2024:

TXU Live your free cost vs ece lowest cost plan

For this customer, ECE's lowest cost plan cost $2,027 per year versus $2,910 for TXU's Live Your Free plan. ECE saved this customer over $880 per year!

The bottom line - ironically, if it says FREE, you will PAY dearly. Energy Choice Experts is here to make sure you pay the lowest annual cost for your electricity and keep our customers from falling for these marketing gimmicks.

Texas Power Switch ....or is it Texas Bait and Switch?

Texans need to read this before they fall for the bait and switch that Texas Power Switch has offered in their most recent energy auction.

Texas Power Switch claims there are savings in group buying. They say you receive a “competitive” electric rate by pooling customers together and then holding an auction with energy suppliers who bid on the potential customer business. They add that with more customer registrations for their service, the result will be a better rate.

Energy Choice Experts has reviewed offers from Texas Power Switch before (posted here) and have exposed their high-rate plans, but it’s been a while so we thought we would check in on them. We stand by our previous conclusion…do not sign up with Texas Power Switch if you want the best deal.

We reviewed the winning bid in their latest offer and compared to current low cost offers that Energy Choice Experts would recommend as of 10/1/2022 for a customer using 14,000 kWh per year. The results below are eye-opening:

• ECE found 38 plans with a lower total annual cost

• The auction winning rate from Texas Power Switch was 18% HIGHER than the low cost offers ECE found

• For this customer ECE would save them over $350 per year!

Annual Cost (14,000 kWh Customer)

Energy Choice Experts plan costs $1725 vs Texas Power Switch plan cost of $2108

Energy Choice Experts is here to look out for the electric consumer. We do not accept commissions from any electric supplier. We are an unbiased personal consultant who works to find you the lowest annual electric cost offers for a small one-time fee of $35.

Let us show you how much we can save you over Texas Power Switch! Go to www.EnergyChoiceExperts.com to order your personal energy analysis once you are within 14 days of your current electric contract expiration.

TXU Energy Free Pass review by Energy Choice Experts

I think I’ll pass out. Do not pass go. Please pass the heartburn medicine…. You can see where this is headed.

TXU has introduced a new plan for the masses called TXU Free Pass. Here’s how TXU is marketing this plan: “Free Pass is a revolution in the retail electric market, as it automatically gives customers free electricity on the seven days they use it the most every month, all year long. This means customers will receive almost three months of free electricity each year on their highest-use days, when savings matter the most.”

Once again, FREE is a great marketing tactic, but Energy Choice Experts is here to help you understand how much the FREE electricity is going to cost you.

To analyze this plan, we downloaded a full year of daily meter readings from 10 random customers with high, medium and low usage profiles. We removed the 7 highest use days for each month and applied the pricing to the remainder of the days. Then we compared this cost to the cost of one of the current lowest cost plans for each month. Annual cost results are as follows:

Cost of TXU Free pass versus low cost plan

Low Cost Plans total $23,200 vs $31,200 for TXU Free Pass, a savings of $8000

So, TXU’s revolutionary plan would have cost every single customer more money. For 9 of our 10 customers the Low Cost Plan ranged 25%-28% lower than Free Pass, and one customer was only 17% lower. Out of the 120 months we reviewed, the Free Pass plan was lower than the Low Cost Plan in only two months. Just to break even on the Free Pass plan, our customers would have had to use 48%-54% of their monthly total in the “free” seven days that are removed from the bill.

If customers understood how much TXU was gouging them with this plan, they might start a revolution of their own.

So is this plan good for anyone? It certainly isn’t good for the masses, but we can think of two situations where this plan might be a good fit. Some Texans are fortunate and have a weekend place that they use 5-10 days a month. The other case is if you (and everyone else living with you) travels for business most weeks. In both of these cases, most or all of your electricity will be free on the days you are at the house or apartment. On the other days, your usage will be very low. If this applies to you, either this plan or a “Free Weekend” plan may be the lowest cost plan for you.

Energy Choice Experts is here to help take the hassle and confusion out of shopping for electric plans and save you time and money. We are completely unbiased, and we cut through all the marketing gimmicks to give you the lowest annual cost plan! Let us help you today.

Review of Griddy by Energy Choice Experts

The Energy Choice Experts review of Griddy has moved to https://www.energychoiceexperts.com/ece-blog/2018/11/25/griddy-review

Review of Griddy by Energy Choice Experts

Griddy is a recent entrant in the Texas Retail Electricity market and has created a new way to buy electricity. They are claiming huge savings, so we decided to check them out to see how they compare to Energy Choice Experts (ECE).

Griddy’s concept sounds great. They say, “You get the wholesale price of electricity…which is the best!” and “Those other guys take the wholesale rate, mark it up through the roof, and shove fees in every nook and cranny they can think of.” Griddy charges you for the spot wholesale price of electricity, TDU fees, and taxes, and then adds $10/month for their service fee.

Our review of Griddy starts with the cost of their plans vs. plans that ECE recommends. We then explain why their customers pay more, what is it like to do business with them, and finally who might benefit from using Griddy.

Will you get the lowest annual cost plan with Griddy or ECE?

Griddy’s website provides usage and historic cost for three different types of households: Apartment, Small House, and Large House. For our apples-to-apples comparison, we used their data from November 2017 to October 2018 in the Oncor distribution area. Then we plugged that data into the ECE model and found the Lowest Annual Cost plans for each type of household, using plans that were available on Power to Choose on November 1, 2017. In other words, the table below shows the annual cost for three types of households depending on which service was used on November 1, 2017– ECE or Griddy.

The bottom line? Energy Choice Experts would have saved Griddy customers 16% to 41% for an average annual savings of $474!

Electricity Plans Annual Cost Nov 2017 - Oct 2018
	Griddy	ECE	Savings $	Savings %
Apartment	$  945.43	$ 553.20	$  392.23	41%
Small House	$1,905.90	$1,314.25	$  591.65	31%
Large House	$2,752.85	$ 2,314.36	$  438.49	16%

Note, the hyperlinks in the ECE prices show the details of the plans ECE would have recommended to each household type.

How can Energy Choice Experts find plans that are so much cheaper than the Griddy plan?

Let’s start with Griddy’s claim that other guys buy electricity at the wholesale rate and mark it up through the roof.  While all companies buy electricity on the wholesale market, there are two distinct ways to buy it. Most companies buy forward contracts throughout the year instead of buying on the spot market. For example, a company might buy 100 mWhs for next March at a rate of 2.8 cents/kWh. Since they have a fixed price on the supply side, they can offer fixed price contracts to residential customers. On the other hand, Griddy buys electricity on the spot market and passes the cost on to their customers. Griddy wants you to gamble that the price you get on the spot market, which changes every 5 minutes, will be lower than the stable price you get from every other supplier. Since there are dozens of other suppliers with multiple plans who each buy forward contracts differently, chances are many of them will buy power at a lower rate than Griddy and in turn they can offer lower prices than Griddy. ECE finds these lower cost plans for customers. If you use Griddy, you are gambling that Griddy will beat everyone else.   

Now let’s look at Griddy’s monthly cost. The $10/month fee might seem reasonable for the service of managing a customer’s account, but their fee is actually more due to a Merchant Services Fee. This is a fee Griddy charges the customer for using a credit or debit card. (They do not accept checks.) They charge customers up to 2.9% of their bill plus $0.30 per transaction. For example, in the screenshot of a Griddy statement below, the Merchant Services Fee is $9.01, so the Griddy fee for that month is actually $19.01, not $10.00.

Most companies absorb credit card fees as a cost of doing business. Griddy’s policy to charge the customer for these fees is very odd. It’s only mentioned in the fine print on their website, and customers don’t see the charge in the default view of their statements; they must click on “Taxes & Fees” to see it. Griddy should reflect on this before they accuse other companies of “shoving fees in every nook and cranny they can think of.”

The default statement view on the Griddy App (left) hides the Merchant Services Fee in the Taxes & Fees Category. You have to click on the down arrow next to the Taxes & Fees value to see the details, including the unusual Merchant Services Fee.

Finally, let’s consider the options ECE has when looking for plans that Griddy does not. For the Apartment and Small House households, we found plans that had exceptionally low rates for their usage patterns.

• For the Apartment household, we found a plan that was $31/month for usage under 1,000 kWh/month. Since the Apartment usage exceeded 1,000 kWh only two months of the year, this was a great plan.

• For the Small House household, we found a plan that had a higher rate, but rewards customers with an $85 credit when usage exceeds 1,000 kWh/month. Since the Small Household always exceeded 1,000 kWh/month, but didn’t have any extremely high-usage months, this is a great plan.

Griddy does not offer any incentives that might benefit a large number of customers based on their usage profiles. Their customers are stuck paying the spot wholesale price for all electricity regardless of how much each customer uses.  Customers that sign up with Griddy are not able to get the incredible deals that ECE can find for many of its customers.

Griddy is clearly a more expensive way to buy electricity, but what is it like to do business with them?

Griddy is unusual in that they employ prepay billing. Most Texans are accustomed to getting monthly bills from their electricity companies like they do from their water, gas, cable, and phone companies. But you will not get a monthly bill from Griddy. Instead, when you sign up for Griddy, you pay them at least $49, which they apply as a credit to your account. As you use electricity, they deduct the cost from your credit. When your balance gets down to $25, they replenish your account by charging your credit card an amount predefined by you, from $49 to $500.  Depending on your recharge amount and your usage each month, you could end up with no charges or many charges on your monthly credit card statement. Prepay billing is advantageous for people with bad credit because there is no deposit required, but it can be challenging for folks that are used to managing their expenses with a monthly budget.

Not only are Griddy’s bill payment cycles unpredictable, the rate you pay for electricity is too. It changes every five minutes. Most of the time, the spot rate doesn’t fluctuate much, but there are times when it skyrockets. The screenshot below is of the Griddy app when the wholesale price of electricity jumped to $1.0837 per kWh at 6AM on November 14. Normally, the rate is under $0.04 per kWh so this is an increase of over 25 times! Every time there is a price spike, Griddy sends an alert to customers so customers have the option of reducing their usage until prices go back down. While these price spikes probably average out because of lower spot wholesale rates at other times, they often cause anxiety for customers. We asked Griddy customer Melissa K. how she feels about the price alerts. She said, "I woke up this morning to my phone alerting me of yet another price spike! Those things stress me out! I can't imagine what the cost would have been if I didn't turn off my heater!" This happened on a 40° morning. Melissa made a choice to save money, but she had a cold house as a result. While the alerts might prevent you from paying extreme rates for electricity, who wants the stress of turning off your heat or A/C? What if you were not home? Would this stress you out like it does Melissa?

"I woke up this morning to my phone alerting me of yet another price spike! Those things stress me out! I can't imagine what the cost would have been if I didn't turn off my heater!"

- Melissa K.

ECE also has access to 100% renewable energy (wind/solar) plans for earth-conscious Texans. Every ECE analysis includes the cost of 100% renewable energy plans as well as mixed energy plans so customers can decide if they want to pay a premium for renewable energy. For some renewable energy plans, like the one we found for the Small House household, there is no premium. Griddy does not offer renewable energy options for earth-conscious Texans.

Is Griddy right for anyone?

Griddy has unusual business practices, they let customers gamble with volatile spot market pricing, their customers can’t buy 100% renewable plans, their rate spike alerts add stress to their customers’ lives, and Griddy customers pay a lot more than Energy Choice Expert customers. For most people, using Griddy simply does not make sense.

Is Griddy right for anyone? Well, if you meet all of the criteria below, they might be right for you. If you don’t meet these criteria, don’t waste your money on Griddy’s service.

• You use a lot of electricity. If you use only 500 kWh/month of electricity, the $10/month fee is effectively an increase of 2 cents/kWh, which significantly increases your annual cost of electricity. However, if you use a lot more electricity than that per month, the effective increase has less impact. For example, if you use 5,000 kWh/month, the effective increase is only 0.2 cents/kWh.

• You have the ability to change your usage based upon the current wholesale price. In order to reduce your electricity usage when you get a price spike, you need to invest in smart home features such as thermostats and lights that you can control from your smartphone no matter where you are. For a cheaper, but less effective option, you can program timers for your pool pump and appliances to run during hours the rates are typically cheaper. If you have an electric car, you can also use these strategies to charge the car batteries when rates are low or expected to be low.

• You are willing to adjust your lifestyle around current energy prices. Once you’ve made the investment in smart home features, you must also be willing to change your lifestyle to get the savings. Melissa K. turned off her heat on a cold morning when the rate was over $1/kWh, over 25 times the usual rate. Many people would probably do the same for such a high spike (though some might choose a warm house over saving money). But what if the rate is $0.20/kWh? What if it’s $0.15/kWh? At what point would you be willing to be hot in the summer or cold in the winter? Further, can everyone living in the house agree to the same breaking point, or will Griddy ultimately lead to family arguments? Is monitoring energy prices and changing your lifestyle accordingly a hassle you are willing to endure?

Thanks for reading this long post to the very end. If you would like to learn more about Energy Choice Experts, check us out at www.EnergyChoiceExperts.com. We provide an unbiased, apples-to-apples comparison of electricity plans for each customer based on their usage. We guarantee that we will find the lowest annual cost plan.

TXU Energy Season Pass - NO PASS HERE!

TXU is marketing their Season Pass plan again. They say on their website and commercials that it is "back by popular demand" and you "get 50% off all winter and summer long".  The Energy Choice Experts find no reason that this plan should be popular with anyone except TXU because they get a big profit margin when customers foolishly sign up for this plan.

We originally reviewed this horrible plan in detail on January 14, 2017. You can read the original post here.

Upon our review of the resurrected Season Pass, we find that it's still a lump of coal in anyone's Christmas stocking.  We used one of the Experts' own usage profile to check this plan and here's how the monthly costs look graphically:

Monthly Cost: TXU Season Pass VS ECE Lowest Cost Plan

Total annual cost of each plan:  TXU = $2187 and ECE = $1067

In summary, the TXU advertises 50% off in winter and summer, but in reality, the annual cost of their plan is 2X the lowest annual cost plans available.  We are 100% confident that we could run any usage profile through our model and come up with numerous plans that will cost you much less than TXU's Season Pass.

Too many folks are taken advantage of by tag lines that advertise "50% off" or "free nights/weekends", and these gimmicks will cost you every time.

The Energy Choice Experts are here to serve our customers' best interest.  We remain committed to being independent and unbiased so we can help our fellow Texans find the lowest annual cost electric plan.

Energy Choice Experts vs IChoosr (large electricity aggregator) – who wins for the consumer?

IChoosr is a European electricity aggregator that recently entered the Texas Retail Electricity market and is making some big savings claims. We decided to review their offering and put their savings claims to the test. (Spoiler alert: They might save you money, but they seldom get you the best deal.)

The objective of an electricity aggregator is to get as many people signed up to its group as possible and to then use the large size of the load to negotiate the best deal with the electricity companies. Professional buyers typically use large volume as leverage to push down a supplier’s price.  But does this strategy work for the Texas residential consumer?  Let’s take a look.

We put IChoosr to the test to see if its aggregation method beat our apples-to-apples lowest annual cost method.  IChoosr’s pilot program in Fate, Texas (Fate Power Switch) was effective 5/15/17 – 6/6/17, and its negotiated rate was 6.881 cents/kWh plus $5.25/month (this includes Oncor fees).  Energy Choice Experts compared this offer to all of our clients’ plans during the same time period.  Including our $35 fee, here’s what our customers saved versus using IChoosr:

• Overall, our customers saved an average of $80/year.
• 30% of our customers saved at least $100/year.
• 9% of our customers saved at least $200/year.

To be fair, we did find 9% of our customers would have saved money with iChoosr, but only an average of $10/year. For clarification, we found plans that were lower cost than iChoosr for 100% of our customers, but occasionally, the savings was less than our $35 fee, so our total cost was slightly higher.

Additionally, we found lower use customers (<10,000 kWh/year) and higher use customers (>30,000 kWh/year) were hurt the most by using IChoosr, paying on average $200/year and $125/year more respectively.

These results show that one size doesn't fit all. ECE dominates the savings for both the high users and the low users.  IChoosr has only one plan to offer and it targets the "average" user, so users outside this average end up subsidizing the group. ECE beats IChoosr 91% of the time, but really spanks them for the high user and low users because we review over a hundred plans to find the one with the Lowest Annual Cost.

IChoosr’s next target is the city of Waco (Waco Power Switch). On 10/9/17, IChoosr will announce the deal, which will probably be available for a few short weeks like it was in Fate. Note that if you are in a contract with another provider and you use iChoosr, you may have to pay a cancellation fee of $100 to $200. ECE works year round so you can wait until your contract is up to avoid a big cancellation fee and get a better deal than iChoosr.

In summary, don’t get caught subsidizing other people’s electricity loads by choosing an aggregator rate.  Sign up with Energy Choice Experts, and you will achieve the Lowest Annual Cost Electric Plan – guaranteed!

Energy Choice Experts Review of the TXU Free Nights & Solar Days Plan

TXU has a new offering this spring called Free Nights & Solar Days. TXU says, "This is the best of both worlds – our customers get the free electricity they love along with the added benefits of renewable energy. Because this plan doesn't require rooftop solar panels, it's an easy way to take advantage of the sun regardless of whether you live in a house or an apartment." Wow, that sounds attractive, but…is it?

This plan is similar to the TXU Free Nights Plan that we reviewed last year, but the energy comes from 100% renewable energy sources instead of mostly non-renewable energy sources. For “green” Texans who prefer wind and solar energy over non-renewable energy, this sounds attractive, exciting, and new. However, 100% wind/solar plans are not new at all; most other electricity companies offer them too. In fact, over 20% of the plans available in Texas source 100% of their energy from wind and solar farms.

Unfortunately, like the Free Nights Plan, the Free Nights & Solar Days Plan is deceptively expensive. TXU customers receive “free” electricity from 9 PM to 6 AM under this plan, which sounds great, but it’s critical to understand the cost of the plan during the day. In the Oncor area, the daytime cost/kWh of this plan is 19.2 cents/kWh (including all REP and TDU fees) if you use 1,000 kWh/month. For reference, Energy Choice Experts clients paid on average 6.3 cents/kWh in 2016. The daytime cost of the TXU Free Nights & Solar Days Plan is triple the cost.

But wait—could you come out ahead on the TXU Free Nights & Solar Days Plan by moving your electricity usage from the daytime to the nighttime? Can getting enough “free” nighttime electricity outweigh the daytime cost of 19.2 cents/kWh? That’s what TXU wants you to think, but is it realistic or even possible?

The TXU plan gives you 9 “free” hours of electricity. According to the TXU Electricity Facts Label, the average person uses 32.7% of his electricity during these 9 hours. What if you were really diligent about not using electricity during the daytime and ran your appliances at night? Well, except the refrigerator; it has to run 24 hours a day. What about the A/C in the summertime? How many Texans could wait until “free” electricity starts at 9:00 at night to start cooling down their 110 degree homes? What about the summer weekends? Who wants to sweat in the house all day? Sounds tough.

So we calculated exactly how much of your electricity usage would have to be used at night for the TXU plan to be more economical than plans recommended by Energy Choice Experts. Turns out that a household using 1,000 kWh/month could come out ahead using the Nights & Solar Days Plan, but only if more than 73% of electricity used in the household were used at night.

Let’s be real. How many people can use 73% of electricity during the 9 “free” hours and only 27% during the other 15 hours of the day? We are not saying it isn’t possible, but you’d have to be obsessed with your energy usage and you’d have a scorching hot home until 9:00 every night of the summer. Nobody wants that kind of hassle when there is a cheaper alternative that allows you to use electricity at your convenience.

Energy Choice Experts is here to keep our clients from falling for gimmicks like “free” nights. Provide us with your last 12 months of usage and we'll give you the straight answer on your Lowest Annual Cost Energy Plan for a one-time fee of $35. We guarantee that you can't find a lower annual cost plan than we can.

For Texans who want to sign up for wind and solar plans, we already provide those options as part of our standard service. These “green” plans often cost a little more than non-renewable energy plans, but we show you how much more they will cost for the year and let you decide if you want to pay a premium.  TXU is not the only company that offers wind and solar energy; they are just the ones that spend the most money marketing these plans.

Energy Choice Experts can help you save some green and still be green.

Lowering the Boom on XOOM ...Energy

Power to Choose is the official state website where most, but not all, retail electric providers post their electric plans for Texas residential customers to review and is our primary source for available plans in Texas. One electric provider that does not post their plans on Power to Choose is XOOM Energy.

Energy Choice Experts reviewed the current plans from XOOM and want to let you know why you SHOULD NOT choose a plan from XOOM Energy.  We went on their website, entered our north Texas zip code, and pulled up their "featured" 12 month plan, the RescueLock 12 Unbundled. In a large font, they say their rate is $0.0489/kWh, which sounds really good....until we looked into the details.

XOOM posted their energy rate only, without including the Oncor delivery charges. In order to understand the real cost, we reviewed the Electricity Facts Label (EFL). When adding in the $4.99 monthly fee from XOOM, the $5.25 monthly fee from Oncor, and the $.03286/kWh distribution rate from Oncor, the the actual cost is $0.092/kWh when using 1,000 kWh's. That's almost double the advertised rate!

Additionally, before even getting to the EFL, they try to draw you in by letting you know that 5% of your monthly energy charges will be donated to PetSmart Charities. If you really would like to donate money to PetSmart Charities, let Energy Choice Experts show you plans that are 30%-40% cheaper than XOOM's energy rate. Then you can give 5%, 10% or more of your energy charges to PetSmart, and you'll still save money over XOOM's plan.

Energy Choice Experts is here to decipher tricks like this and make your electricity choice simple. 

Why ECE doesn't look at Ratings of Texas Electricity Companies and you shouldn't either.

With the advent of online shopping, consumers have access to research and a plethora of reviews about products and services. Considering that many Texans spend $1000 to $2000 per year on electricity, it makes sense that they would do their research and check reviews.

So why does ECE recommend Texans ignore ratings of electricity companies when shopping for electricity plans in Texas and only focus on Total Annual Cost? We have three answers to this question:

1. Ratings companies can't agree on which providers are best.
2. Electricity is a commodity; there is no product differentiation.
3. You should never have to talk with Customer Service, especially if you set up auto-pay.

Let's look at these more deeply.

Ratings companies can't agree on which providers are best.

Several companies rate electricity providers, but many of them are biased because someone is paying them to publish the rankings or they get commission from the companies they represent. However, we believe two ratings companies provide unbiased reviews in Texas: (1) JD Power, a recognized name in rating customer service of many products and services, and (2) the Texas Public Utility Commission that publishes the Retail Electric Providers Complaint Scorecard on the Power To Choose website.

Since both of these sources are unbiased, you would expect their top 10 lists to be virtually the same. But that couldn't be further from the truth. None of the top 10 providers on the Power To Choose list are on the JD Powers top 10 list. Further, JD Power gives its highest score to Champion Energy, which is ranked number 26 by Power To Choose. Conversely, Power to Choose rates Alliance Power as the best, and JD Power doesn't even rank Alliance Power.

If these two independent surveys can't agree on which Texas Electricity companies are best, how can ECE use either of their scorecards to recommend one REP over another to our clients? 

Electricity is a commodity; there is no product differentiation.

When differentiating products and services, consumers typically consider Cost, Quality, and Reliability. For electricity, Cost is the only differentiator.

Although electricity is generated using different sources, such as solar, wind, coal, and natural gas, all of the electricity generated from these sources have the same quality. When you flip on a light switch, the bulb burns at the same brightness no matter whom you buy electricity from.

Not only is the quality the same, the reliability is too. Electricity providers simply supply you with electricity; they do not own or repair the poles and wires that transmit electricity to your house. That job is managed by your TDU (Oncor, Centerpoint,…). So if your street has an electricity outage, your TDU is responsible for getting the entire street’s electricity turned back on, regardless of the various providers you and your neighbors use.

The only real non-cost difference between electricity plans is the source of the electricity. The PUC requires REPs to state the percent of renewable (wind and solar) electricity that is generated for each plan. Many companies sell plans that that have 100% renewable power sources. These often cost more and some Texans are willing to pay a premium for it. ECE recognizes this product differentiator, so we include renewable electricity plan options with our recommendations.

In summary, electricity is a commodity, like gasoline. If two neighboring gas stations were to sell regular unleaded at different prices, most consumers would fill up at the cheapest station. The same should be true for electricity.

You should never have to talk with Customer Service, especially if you set up auto-pay.

When you buy a new car and the steering goes out in the first month, you talk to the dealer. When you buy a Venti Caffe Latte at Starbucks and get a tall Caffe Mocha instead, you ask them to replace it. But what can go wrong with electricity? Nothing, except power can go out— and then you call your TDU, not your provider.

The point is you should never have to contact your electricity company, especially if you sign up on-line and set up auto draft from your checking account or credit card. This is our personal experience.

• The founders of Energy Choice Experts have changed electricity providers every year for the past 15 years, using over 20 different providers. We always set up auto draft and have never had to talk to anyone in customer service.
• In fact, one Founder is currently using HINO, which is not only ranked dead last (#56) by Power To Choose, but was also called the “worst electric company in Texas” by Dave Lieber of the Dallas Morning News. What has been his experience with HINO? He has never had to contact their customer service and has paid less than 4 cents/kWh since signing up with them last May.

So there you have it — three reasons that Energy Choice Experts does not take into account electricity company ratings. We are firm believers that you should only consider TOTAL ANNUAL COST when comparing electricity companies and plans, and possibly the percent of renewable electricity. There is no difference in the quality of electricity, there is no good source that compares the customer service of one company over another, and in reality, you should never have to contact Customer Service anyway.

TXU Season Pass 24 Review by Energy Choice Experts

TXU is spending a lot of money to market its new electricity plan, Season Pass 24. Historically, electricity plans marketed by TXU are deceptive and expensive for the consumer. TXU’s "Free Nights and Weekend" plan is one we previously reviewed and definitely do not recommend.

So, how does TXU’s Season Pass 24 plan compare?

The offer: “Season Pass Savings of 50% off the Energy Charge” in the three summer months and three winter months. 

On the surface, the plan sounds good. In Texas we all know how big those summer bills can be, and, if you have electric heat, the winter bills can generate some high costs too.

What’s the catch? Energy Choice Experts finds 3 areas of concern with this plan.

1. First, the spring and fall rates are extremely high! When you factor in all fixed and variable monthly costs, the effective cost/kWh at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh are 18.0, 16.5, and 15.8 cents/kWh respectively. This is more than twice the rate of 6.0 to 8.0 cents/kWh, the rate ECE considers competitive.
   
   
2. 50% savings in the summer and winter sounds great, but what is it really?  Look closely and you’ll see the discount is only on the Energy Charge. When you factor in all the costs, the effective cost/kWh at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh are 12.4, 10.9, and 10.1 cents/kWh respectively. That’s more like 33% off versus their 50% off claim. Additionally, the “discounted” rate does not even come close to the competitive rates noted above.
   
   
3. There’s also a catch with TXU’s definition of "summer" and "winter," which works to their advantage and not yours. This year, summer is from June 20th to September 22nd, but the TXU Season Pass summer discount applies to the bills you receive in June, July, and August.  So if your monthly meter reading is on the 15th, your discounted rate is actually from May 16 to August 15, which means you would pay 16 to 18 cents/kWh during 40% of the summer. If TXU can measure usage by time of day for their free nights program, shouldn’t they be able to align this plan with the real days of summer?

In summary, do not sign up for this plan. It is full of deception and high prices. As we have seen in the past, if TXU spends heavily on marketing a plan, you know it's a bad deal.

Energy Choice Experts is here to keep our customers from falling for these gimmicks. Provide us with your usage and we'll give you the straight answer on your Lowest Annual Cost Energy Plan for a one-time fee of $35. We guarantee that you can't find a lower annual cost plan than we can.

When does a $750 Bonus from TXU cost you over $1,000?

One of our Dallas area clients recently received a letter from TXU offering a bonus of $750 ($375/year for 2 years) if she signed up for their Texas Choice 24 plan. She asked Energy Choice Experts to take a look and see how good of a deal it was (or wasn't).

We found the details of the Texas Choice 24 plan on-line and calculated the two year cost at $4,028 based upon her annual usage of 17,248 kWh. When you consider the bonus of $750, her final cost is $3,278 or $1,639/year.

Next, we ran her usage in the Energy Choice Experts model and found an annual plan that would cost $1,120/year, which would save her $1,038 or $519/year compared to the Texas Choice 24 plan.

Even more shocking, we discovered that 83% of the annual plans in her area (Oncor) have a lower annual cost than the TXU Texas Choice 24 plan. In other words, if she were to throw a dart at a list of available annual plans, she'd have an 83% chance of hitting a plan with a lower annual cost than the TXU Texas Choice 24 plan!

This is just another example of how electricity companies use deceptive marketing to trick Texans into paying too much for electricity. The promise of a $750 bonus enticed our client to sign up for the TXU plan. Luckily she contacted us first. Energy Choice Experts looks at the annual cost of plans in order to give our clients a true apples-to-apples comparison of electricity plans.

Don't take chances on on your electricity costs - let the Expert do the work for you.

The Cost of FREE Electricity

Usually when someone tells you that something is free, there's a hidden cost somewhere.  When it comes to electric plans it's no different. 

Our friends at TXU are at it again.  They have resurrected the Energy Free Nights plan that gives you "free" electricity for 9 hours every night.  Here's why TXU says you'll want this plan: get a cool nights sleep on their dime, track all the free electricity you're getting using their mobile app, and finally because Free Nights customers got 40% of their electricity free in 2015.

Energy Choice Experts thinks this sounds a little too good, so we decided to see how this plan would stack up against a simple, straight-forward plan without "free" electricity.  We used one of our own customer profiles and plotted the monthly cost of TXU's plan versus the ECE recommended plan below.

What we found was that TXU's plan was 55% higher and would actually cost our customer over $600 more per year!

In this example, the customer would have received 45% of his electricity for free compared to the 40% mentioned by TXU for their customers in 2015.  However, the cost of electricity during the other 55% of the time was 2.77 times higher than the flat rate on the other plan we compared it against.  

So why would a customer choose this plan?  Maybe they think they can shift some extra load into the nighttime hours to take more advantage of the "free" period.  Well, considering that the largest consumers of electricity, the A/C and refrigerator, can't really be shut down completely during the day (unless you want a 100 degree house to cool down when you get home in the summer) it's not likely that you could make this plan work to your benefit.  

Energy Choice Experts is here to keep our customers from falling for these gimmicks.  Provide us with your usage and we'll give you the straight answer on your Lowest Annual Cost Energy Plan for a one-time fee of $35 ....a lot less than paying someone like TXU an extra $600 for "free" electricity!

Trick or Treat? This electric plan is just another trick!

We at Energy Choice Experts see all kinds of tricks played by the electric providers.  That is one of the primary reasons we started our company, because you, the customer, are getting tricked into paying more for electricity than you should.  Let's look at how this happens.

Here is a snapshot of a featured "Exclusive 12 Mo Plan" from one of the many sites on the web where you can shop for electric plans:

Wow, 5.9 cents including delivery charges looks pretty good, right?  Well, let's look a little deeper.  Here is the Electric Facts Label that goes along with this plan.

The plan states you will be charged $59 dollars for anything between 0-1000 kWh, and another $59 for anything from 1001-2000 kWh.  This allows them to show a 5.9 cent rate on the facts label above because you pay $59 if you use exactly 1000 kWh and $118 ($59+$59) if you use exactly 2000 kWh.  However, if you use 1001 kWh you're going to pay the same $118 for an effective rate of 11.8 cents per kWh ($118 / 1001).  So, if you're going to use exactly 1000 kWh per month or exactly 2000 kWh per month, then this is the plan for you.  In reality, this is not going to happen and you'll end up paying too much. Additionally, they charged a rate of 8.9 cents/kWh for usage above 2000 kWh. This is more than 2 cents/kWh higher than the best plans and will hit customers the hardest in the summer months when they use their A/C.

We compared two of our customers to this plan from February.  One customer had higher usage ranging between 1600-3450 kWh per month with an annual average of 2270 kWh, and the other customer had lower usage ranging between 1100-2900 per month with an annual average of 1830 kWh per month.  Note that both customers are close to a 2000 kWh/month average usage, so they may have thought the above rate was a great deal at 5.9 cents/kWh.  However, this trick would have cost our higher use customer $81 and our lower use customer $231 if they would have chose this tricky plan over the ECE recommended plan.

Energy Choice Experts is here to cut through all the tricks the electric companies play.  We're here to make sure you pay the absolute Lowest Annual Cost.  When you're within 14 days of your contract renewal, sign up with ECE and we'll send your Lowest Annual Cost analysis within 24 hours.

How Much Would You Pay for 100% Renewable Electricity?

Many people's perception of renewable (aka green) power is that it comes at a much higher cost. Just a year or two before we created the Energy Choice Experts Lowest Annual Cost model in 2015, 100% renewable electricity was often priced $200 per year or greater than "brown" power. This price differential was enough to keep many Texans from choosing a green plan.

At ECE we know that cost may be the first priority for many consumers when choosing an electricity plan, so our company provides the overall plan with the Lowest Annual Cost for our customers based upon their unique usage history. However, many Texans also want to be good stewards of our planet, so we also list the lowest annual cost 100% renewable energy plan.

We have been pleased to see the premium for green electricity has been less than $50 per year for most of our customers the last few months. Some customers didn't pay any premium for green electricity!

How is this possible? Well, Texans should be proud that our state owns the largest amount of wind generation capacity in the country.  If Texas were considered a country, it would rank about 6th for wind generation.  

So if you're searching now for a new electric plan, consider going green. Who wouldn't choose a green plan if the cost was the same?

How do Electric Companies Thank their Loyal Customers?

Electric companies thank their loyal customers by charging them more than their new customers. Yes, you read that correctly. Electric companies offer their best rates to new customers and they prey on their "loyal" customers. Unlike airlines that reward their loyal customers with frequent flier miles and many retail companies that reward their loyal customers with special offers, electric companies make loyal customers pay more.

Further, your current electricity company has the unique knowledge of when your contract expires so they try to lock you into a high rate before you can shop the competition. A recent ECE customer shared an e-mail from his current provider. The e-mail told their customer that they need to act in the next 3 days to lock in a great rate, even though their contract doesn't expire for almost 3 months. The electric companies know that the you can't switch to another provider until 14 days before your contract expires so they want to lock their current customers in early so you don't shop the competition.

So what about the great rate they offer to loyal customers. ECE compared the rate in the retention letter to the rate that the same provider offers on www.powertochoose.org for new customers. The provider is charging local customers 1.1 cents/kWh more. In Texas, the average consumer uses 18,000 kWh/ year so the loyal customer's annual cost is $198 higher.

ECE recommends you change your electricity company every 12 months to always be in a low introductory rate. Electricity companies do not reward their loyal customers, so why would you want to be loyal to them?

Apples, Pineapples & Oranges ...

Choosing electricity plans in Texas is not apples-to-apples, it's more like "apples, pineapples and oranges" according to the NBC5 news story in the video clip above.  The average residential electricity consumer is faced with many variables, confusing fees and too many choices.  Even advanced math students at the University of Texas at Arlington had trouble making sense of it all. 

While we don't think you need to understand calculus to figure out your lowest cost plan, it does take an understanding of tricky fees (minimun usage fees, usage credits, etc) and knowledge of delivery rates and fees.  Then if you have time to plug in your individual 12 months of usage into tens or hundreds of plans, you can finally determine your best electric plan.

If you want to save yourself the electric plan brain-freeze described above, let Energy Choice Experts do this work for you.  Provide us with your 12 months of usage, and we'll do the rest.  Our one-time $35 dollar fee is less than many folks spend on Starbucks in a month, and we'll potentially save you hundreds of dollars a year. 

ECE vs One Big Switch

Recently One Big Switch ran a marketing campaign in Dallas area promising to "unlock exclusive group discounts" on electricity because they had over 25,000 members.

The industry term for this is aggregation. Many HOAs have tried aggregation for 300-500 homeowners. Fundamentally, aggregation sounds attractive, but does it save money? We put One Big Switch to the test.

We compared the total annual cost of the One Big Switch plan to the plans in our database for every customer for the past month. On average, their plan was listed as the 18th Lowest Annual Cost plan and their best showing was 12th place. In other words, we identified at least 11 lower cost plans than the One Big Switch plan for every customer. More importantly, our customers saved an average of $204.00 by choosing our recommended plan over theirs!

Don't be fooled by companies marketing low rates through volume negotiations. Our proven Lowest Annual Cost process is the best way to save money on electricity.