Good afternoon, everyone. I just wanted to highlight some of the things happening in the Texas electricity market, from marketplace news as well as news regarding electricity providers.
Bounce Energy – First off, Texas Electricity Ratings partner Bounce Energy has had an extremely busy and productive week. First, they launched their new iPhone application. It allows you to pay your bill, look at historical usage, and even includes tips on saving energy. You can get that app here. And even cooler, they’ve launched a new platform that will allow customers to order electricity without ever leaving Facebook. This is a pretty cool technology upgrade that fits right in the wheelhouse for the country’s “most ‘liked’ electricity company.”
Twin Eagle Resource Management – Awhile back, I wrote about Twin Eagle Resource Management, a new company entering the Texas deregulated electricity marketplace. Now it looks like that will not be happening because of some questionable behavior. Paul Ring at Energy Choice Matters has some more details, specifically:
According to the SEC, the investigation arose, “out of Respondent’s [Doty] role in Dynegy’s materially misleading use of a structured-finance transaction called Project Alpha (‘Alpha’).” The SEC said that, “Alpha was essentially a $300 million loan to Dynegy, disguised as cash from operations through the purchase and sale of natural gas,” that, “had no business purpose aside from minimizing Dynegy’s taxes and narrowing the gap between Dynegy’s net income and operating cash flow.”
Whoops. For some clarity, Doty refers to Robert Doty, the Executive Vice Present and CFO of Twin Eagle. It’s unclear what will come of Twin Eagle at this point.
Bill Assistance – Finally, here’s an article from awhile back that has a list of different charities that help out people in financial need with their electricity bills. Each charity has different requirements for assisting people with their Texas electricity bills, but for people feeling a financial pinch, it is probably worth exploring.