Electricity

Timberwood is in the deregulated part of the Texas electricity market, so the wires and the bill come from two different companies.

Two companies

CenterPoint Energy handles transmission and distribution. They own the poles, the wires and the meter, and they restore power after a storm. In their own words, "We deliver but do not sell electricity."¹ They deliver "on behalf of 85 retail electric providers" across a 5,000 square mile area.² Outages are reported to CenterPoint no matter who sends the bill. CenterPoint cannot be switched.

The retail electric provider sells the electricity, and that company is a choice among dozens. Switching involves no physical work and no interruption. The same CenterPoint wires carry the power either way.

How the pricing works

Every plan comes with an Electricity Facts Label, and state rules require it to quote the average price at three usage levels for a house: 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kWh a month.³ The average price at one level does not apply at another.

Some plans carry a minimum usage fee. The commission's guidance says the levels where a plan "might incur a fee are less than 500 or 1,000 kWh", and companies name that fee differently, so it has to be read off the label.⁴

The state runs a comparison site, powertochoose.org, "the official and unbiased electric choice website of the Public Utility Commission of Texas".⁵ The site "is available to all electric providers to list their offers for free", so it is a listing rather than a ranking.⁵

To compare plans against a specific house, take twelve months of actual kWh off past bills and compare at those usage levels.

Worth knowing

• If a contract ends and nothing is done, it rolls over. The commission says to renew or pick a new provider before it ends "in order to prevent being automatically switched to a month-to-month, variable rate plan".⁴
• Fixed plans usually carry an early termination fee, and moving cancels it. State rules say there "must be no early termination fee assessed to the customer as a result of the customer's relocation", as long as the customer gives a forwarding address and, if asked, proof of the move.³
• A contract covers one address. On a move, "the customer is under no obligation to continue the contract at another location".³

Outages

Outages are reported to CenterPoint, not to the retailer: 713-207-2222, which is also the number for a downed line.¹ A gas leak has its own number, 888-876-5786.¹ CenterPoint runs an outage tracker whose data refreshes "every five minutes".⁶ See storms and outages.

Still open

Which retailers neighbors here have used, what they paid, and how billing disputes were handled. Also whether anyone has had a deposit waived and what it took, since no provider publishes that.

See also

• Storms and outages
• Internet