My name is Matt, and I’m probably like every other Texan who will visit this site, I’m a guy who has had mixed experiences with electricity companies in Texas. Some experiences have been good, and some experiences have been, well, lets just say decidedly sub-par. When I went looking for my latest electricity company, I realized there wasn’t an easy place to read about different customer experiences AND get basic information about the different providers and the plans they offer. So I decided to make one. There’s a lot of things for Texans to consider when they choose what kind of electricity provider is best for them, and my goal is to provide a site where customers can get all the information they need, in an easy to understand format, so they can make an informed decision. On top of that, I think it’s important to offer people a place where they can share their own good and bad experiences they’ve had in the Texas Electricity Market.
nice blog! very helpful. thanks for this.
Thanks for the kind words.
You can also follow us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/TexasElectricity. I do a lot of updates their with other goings on in the electricity marketplace as well as promotional deals from some of the major companies. Additionally, the shopping website http://www.TexasElectricityRatings.com allows shoppers to read reviews of different companies from actual customers and search for new electricity plans and providers.
Matt,
Excellent blog. I moved to Texas 2 yrs ago and have been shopping for residential electricity since. Had TXU (ugh) then SimplePower(good) and now Tara(seems ok – I liked that they had a 500 KWH account fee threshold since I average about 750kwh).
I understand I’m to get a smartmeter next year and a question came to mind.
The duration(days) of the “billing cycle” seems to be under the control of the TDSP. Once the smartmeters are in place, how will it evolve. If the REPs ever get to control it, there could be a problem.
I could envision some abuses since the meter can be read easily any time.
Example – a plan with a threshold charge of $10.00 waived for > 1000 KWH/”cycle” . Someone could develop an algorithm that checks customer usage patterns and bills when a customer has 999 KWH thereby increasing the KWH effective rate. By selecting a subset of customers each “cycle” no pattern would be obvious to the customer.
I notice that my billing cycles have been as short as 24 days and as long as 34 days. (I’m in Tomball – Centerpoint TDSP area). I think it would be easy enough to manipulate the billing cycle if you know the historic usage and weather to the REPs advantage.
I guess if the billing cycle times are independent of the REP, there’s little danger but strange things have happened when money is involved.
Also, I looked at the SMARTMETERTEXAS website and was sadly dissapointed at the user data download interface. When you request a days data, you get a spreadsheet without the date as a column. You have to go back and insert it manually into the downloaded spreadsheet.
Imagine doing it for each day in the month. Seems amateurish for a so called profession organization. Also, their temporal model is flawed – they give 16 minutes per transaction instead of the 15 minutes claimed.
(e.g. the list strat time at say 14:00 and end time as 14:15 – 16 minutes – count em!).
Anyway, I love this blog since it covers so many issues I came across while shopping for electric energy here in Texas ( I moved down from NJ in May 2009 where there was no REP choice)
regards,
Joe in Tomball
Joe,
I woudn’t be concerned about REP’s getting control of smart meters or billing terms. That is literally outside of their control as specified by the agreements in place with deregulation. REP’s are the guys who sell you your power, are responsible for customer service, and keep the pricing competitive thanks to the free market. The TDSP’s are your “pole and line” guys and they always will be. Not only will this never happen due to oversights and agreements, I can assure you that no REP would ever want to be responsible for meter reading and monitoring. When that happens, then they’d all have to expand as a company in regards to employees and responsibilities to meter reading, power outages, and everything else that I assure you no electricity provider ever wants to have anything to do with at all. The fact of the matter is, even an REP WANTED to try and manipulate the market that way, it would never benefit them as much as it would cost them to have to monitor usage.
As it stands, a TDSP sends each REP a customer’s usage each month, and then they bill you.
The billing cycles are determined by the TDSP and meter readings, plain and simple. Trust me, it will never happen. The PUC would never want it to happen, and neither would the REPs.
I actually haven’t checked out the usability and the robustness of the smart meter sites, but I can tell you that that will continue to evolve – and probably rapidly – as the TDSPs want people to be using smart meters and to be engaged in the market. Unfortunately, big corporations rarely move as fast from technology standpoints as many of the more savvy users would like, but they’ll get there. In fact, I imagine that REP’s will actually be coming up with better applications for smart meters for people to use from their cell phones before the TDSP sites improve.
I’m glad you enjoy the blog, Joe. I try to be helpful to the Texas marketplace. After all, confusion and a lack of understanding is in my opinion the biggest frustration for customers in Texas.