Electricity Price Switching

[mjonis]

I live in NY. We have a rather large choice of ESCOs. Full disclosure I'm a "sales person" for one of them (very very part time thing).
Anyway, National Grid is the delivery company. They always had variable pricing (the rates change daily/hourly/whatever). I'd say in our state probably 95% of the ESCOs have variable pricing. I refuse to get locked into a contract where pricing varies. That's why I went with the one I did. I got 7% guaranteed discount on the first 3 months of gas/electric (they no longer do this, unfortunately), and guaranteed 1% thereafter.

a) NO contract. However, you must be a customer for 12 consecutive months to get the guaranteed savings.
b) They guarantee (it's in writing on) at *least* a 1% discount (used to be 2% until Governor Cuomo wanted to basically ban all the ESCOs becuase--surprise--not all of them saved you money) over what National Grid would charge.

Took me all of 3 minutes to sign up (mostly due to the phone verification process to make sure it was me and not someone else).

It's "free" money. That year that we had the high gas price spike (which also affected our electricity because most of NY power purchasing is from natural gas plants), everyone else got zapped with a 35% or more price hike (National Grid then "spread" it out over like 3-4 months to ease the pain). I got a hefty refund check from my provider since they guaranteed to beat that by at least 1%.

 

[STLDisney_Freak]

I have budget billing with my electricity, but as far as picking which electricity company to use. I live in St Louis and there is only one electric company. Trust me I wish there was more. I would love to install some solar panels, but I don't have the money in the budget for that yet.

 

[DisneyHardin]

I had no idea there were places where there was more than one power company. We have just one here and they provide the gas and electric together in the same bill.

I am in KY. Our house is all electric and about 2300 sq ft - we are on the budget for $155/month. Seeing some of the above posts about their bills makes me realize I have a pretty good rate.

 

[msmayor]

For those who talk of more than one power company...it's really NOT more than one power company...it's your power provider.

In most all cases, there are not competing pipelines or power lines zig-zagging all over the place. There is ONE pipeline...and that is usually owned and operated by whatever regulated utility covers the service area.

Now let's talk natural gas. Maybe you want to buy your natural gas where you've been getting it all along...from your gas utility that owns the pipelines. That's traditionally how it's done. But if you choose to purchase from another supplier, you can (if your state allows it). You pay a lower commodity price...the price for the gas alone. You are STILL paying Traditional Gas Utility for the actual transportation of that gas into your home, so you're paying them for the lines and delivering the gas you bought from, say ABC gas. You in effect are now paying two people for your gas instead of just Traditional Gas Utility.

It works that way for electricity too. You may buy your power from Third Party Generating Company but your Traditional Electric Utility owns the power lines and you have to pay them the transmission fees to get your power from Third Party into your house.

 

[DisneyCowgirl]

We have no choice in CO. Yet our utilities are pretty cheap compared to all my family in TX.

Example:
my house CO- 4000sq ft winter heating bill 180.00 (on avg)
in-laws TX - 2600 sqft winter heating bill 500.00 (on avg)

There is a similar discrepancy for the summer bills. Maybe it is just who they have. I don't know?? All my TX family complains about high utility bills.

I'm in TX and use a service that evaluates my energy usage and determines which plan I should use. My bills have consistently been less than half what they were prior to me using this service. We have about 2700 sq ft that we cool to really low temps in the summer, and our bill for June was $160. I was really surprised by how much the rates vary between providers.

 

[georgina]

I'm in PA too and there is a wide range of prices. The delivery is done by the same company that owns the transmission lines or pipes, but you can choose the supplier. I have locked in a low natural gas rate (for heat, hot water, gas dryer, and cooktop) for 2 years. I was getting 100% renewable electricity from Green Mountain for a couple of years, but when the contract is up they raise the rates despite still offering new customers a low introductory rate, so I switched to another supplier recently. I always look for a fixed price for 1 year, and am happy to pay extra to get my electricity from renewable resources.

It's funny, I looked at my natural gas bill for last month. I am paying $1.78 to the supplier and $21.89 for the transmission. Gas is really cheap around here now with all the fracking going on. My total is more like $150 in the winter.