NA Electricity contracts

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
20,771
Location
west Texas
Display Name
Display name:
Dave Taylor
Am I wrong about this?

Seems like when electricity prices are climbing, I hear nothing from providers about switching or renewing.
Now, prices have been dropping for the last 2 months and they won't leave me alone.

My thought is that they want to lock me in before prices bottom out, so they themselves can benefit from the future lower cost. So, their current push to sell is an indication that prices have not bottomed out yet.
I should wait til they start leaving me alone, as an indication that prices are close to nadir, then give them a call.

Getting offered 4¢ right now, have paid 11¢ in the past. Can't recall usage but it is an all-electric 4500sf office. Texas.
 
This must be a TX thing. Every place I've had electricity you just pay whatever the rate is each month just like buying gas at the pump. The price is whatever it is.
 
I can get a 3-4 year contract. Maybe not at 4¢. I can get 2yrs @ 4¢ right now.
 
I have Real Time hourly pricing.

Good: I pay an rip-off average that's much less than the rip-off fixed rate, currently at 0.12 KwH. Youse guy in Texas getting juice from the nuke plants we paid for are welcome.
Fun: There are hours where you actually get paid to use electricity.
BAD: For a few hours in the winter of 2014 rates hit over $2.00 KWh.

I use delayed start and some home automation to move demand to cheap rate hours.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I can get a 3-4 year contract. Maybe not at 4¢. I can get 2yrs @ 4¢ right now.
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Wow, $0.04 is really cheap. I haven't been paying attention to the power market lately but wholesale used to be about $0.05. I'd be leaning towards about another year of depressed energy prices. Have a look at the futures market and make a call.
 
cowman said:
This must be a TX thing. Every place I've had electricity you just pay whatever the rate is each month just like buying gas at the pump. The price is whatever it is.
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Most places you now have a choice from whom you buy your electricity, this is the only good that came out of the ENRON debacle and allows small scale wind farms to succeed.
 
Somedudeintn said:
Yea, Texas is essentially set up to be their own country as far as electricity goes. When I worked there a few years ago ERCOT managed all of the electricity generators.
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Kinda limits their market potential doesn't it?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Am I wrong about this?

Seems like when electricity prices are climbing, I hear nothing from providers about switching or renewing.
Now, prices have been dropping for the last 2 months and they won't leave me alone.

My thought is that they want to lock me in before prices bottom out, so they themselves can benefit from the future lower cost. So, their current push to sell is an indication that prices have not bottomed out yet.
I should wait til they start leaving me alone, as an indication that prices are close to nadir, then give them a call.

Getting offered 4¢ right now, have paid 11¢ in the past. Can't recall usage but it is an all-electric 4500sf office. Texas.
Click to expand...

4 cents is pretty good. At best combined cycle plants are about 60% efficient.

Gas is $2.30/mmbtu so $2.30 would get you 0.6mmbtu from a CC or it'd be about 3.83 to get 1mmbtu of electricity which is equal to 293.3 kWh. So actual fuel cost of 0.015 dollars per kWh. Add in transmission, distribution, and cost of capital and I'd think you would get close to your 4c. That's iPhone math so there are likely to be errors. Not sure how much of Texas' generation is from coal, Nuke, gas, but gas is super cheap right now and helping electricity prices out. Once the rest of the coal plants shut down in a few years and the EPA bans fracking I'm guessing gas prices will skyrocket.
 
I don't think the 4¢ is as cheap as it sounds, we pay for trans/distribution separately and it is a fixed rate plus it has been about the same cost as the electricity on past bills.
 
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Let'sgoflying! said:
I don't think the 4¢ is as cheap as it sounds, we pay for trans/distribution separately and it is a fixed rate plus it has been about the same cost as the electricity on past bills.
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Here in Georgia I pay $19/ month + about 7.5 cents per kWh + 7%tax. No choice in electricity provider (unless I move).
 
We are on a co-op where we live, but AFAIK there's nowhere in the State where you can choose your provider at all.

This came up before in one of the electric car threads some time ago. Folks were discussing which plan they should get and what-not. I've lived here most of my life and all of my adult life, and there's never been a choice.

The only choice nowadays is you can choose to pay more for wind power if you're on the major commercial carrier, Xcel Energy. Anyone not on that system may or may not have that choice. We do not.

If it sounds bad, it isn't all bad. The co-op charges a few pennies more per kilowatt-hour than some and less than the big regulated commercial carrier. They also refund dividends back to customers if maintenance and operations expenses fall below estimates. So net/net, as long as there's no major storm damage they weren't planning on, we pay a very low rate. I haven't seen a year yet where we haven't gotten back at least 10% of our annual usage in a dividend check.

We'll see if the politicians hate coal so much that they ruin that with penalties for the small co-op with no wind or solar investments. I'm pretty sure knowing Colorado history, they'll make sure to do that so the rural low-income areas can find their city follies. That's pretty normal around here. Denver has the politicians and the votes. Rural areas can suck it if Denverites want something.

That's how it has always traditionally worked here, anyway.
 
Oh. Yeah. Real numbers. Before the annual capital credit refund we pay $0.123 per KWh.

Capital refund credits are calculated by usage.

Incorporated cities and towns pay roughly $0.020 less per KWh. The co-op recognizes that rural service costs more to maintain and the city dwellers shouldn't pay for that. (Kinda backward from our politicians and their pet projects as you can see.)

There's also some new rates for folks who generate so much electricity that their usage no longer covers the costs of maintaining the service to them during the times they are a net consumer instead of producer, and it's based on load factor. If they are below 10% load factor over the course of a month, their rate fort the small amount of power they use jumps considerably.
 
cowman said:
This must be a TX thing. Every place I've had electricity you just pay whatever the rate is each month just like buying gas at the pump. The price is whatever it is.
Click to expand...

Do you have Coop power or investor owned utility ?
 
denverpilot said:
Oh. Yeah. Real numbers. Before the annual capital credit refund we pay $0.123 per KWh.

Capital refund credits are calculated by usage.

Incorporated cities and towns pay roughly $0.020 less per KWh. The co-op recognizes that rural service costs more to maintain and the city dwellers shouldn't pay for that. (Kinda backward from our politicians and their pet projects as you can see.)

There's also some new rates for folks who generate so much electricity that their usage no longer covers the costs of maintaining the service to them during the times they are a net consumer instead of producer, and it's based on load factor. If they are below 10% load factor over the course of a month, their rate fort the small amount of power they use jumps considerably.
Click to expand...
I know I'm in the same co-op as you. I never bothered to look at the KWh since I think I pay about the minimum. My electric bill hasn't varied much in the 23 years I've lived here. It hovers just under $40/month.
 
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