Electric plan? (Katy: coupon, apartments, good credit)

[adam12]

I am moving into an apartment soon and was looking at the powertochoose.com website about electricity rates. I was wondering if it is best to go with the variable plans that have no time commitment or lock in a rate and have a 12 month commitment? If you have any other advice on how to go about choosing a provider I would appreciate it. Thanks.

[eastwest]

Reliant blows, TXU has always given me the best rates.

[eisd]

What I have discovered is that apartment electricity in Texas is a little different. The apartment will usually give you a sheet with the main incumbent provider in the area like TXU or Reliant. When you call them they usually require a pretty hefty deposit for an apartment anywhere from $300-$500.

The way to get around this is to not call TXU or Reliant as the deposit is out of this world atleast it was for me. Instead look up promotional and coupon codes on google. I went to Spark energy who offers the same electric rate even if your using less then 500 kwh a month as they offer if you are over 1500 kwh a month. As of September their rate was like 11 cents kwh with no monthly service charge. I found a promo code for Spark by just typing in "Spark Energy promo code" in google and then using the code I found to enter in their coupon code field.

I am sure other energy companies have the same type of promo field but I used this one and got a great rate.

An imortant thing when signing up for electricity for an apartment is to make sure the rate the energy company quotes you is good if you are using 500 kwh or less in energy. Apartments many times don't use that much energy and so you want to make sure they don't hike the rate up on you. The facts label for their plan should tell you. The "facts label" is the equivalent of a "nutrition label" on the back of a can of food.

If you go to Texas Electric Choice | Home you can find all the electric rate plans with their facts label. Be sure to read the facts label before signing up.

[tstone]

I use spark energy, no deposit if you have good credit, all automatic billing, all online. Has worked fine for me and is likely the cheapest way to go. That, or Amigo.

[BFFMaya]

I just today switched from Reliant. Signed up with them from Florida before moving into an apartment here in Katy in June. It was a rush move and in Florida we don't have a gazillion companies to choose from, just one.

Anyway, started checking things out a few weeks ago after another post on here about electric rates. That's when I realized we went from paying 10.8 cents in Florida to our current 15.8 rate with Reliant.

Checked out a bunch of companies on the comparison list, most Ive never heard of and we dont like auto-billing which many required. We prefer to use online banking that way we can control who gets what and when. So that eliminated a bunch for us.

Direct Energy was offering a 12.2 cent rate locked in for 12 months with no contract/commitment and a $5 monthly customer charge.

We are currently using around 1080 Kwh in our apartment, which I thought was outrageous, but Im working on cutting that down. May have something to do with the fact that I work from home, but our new home is 3100 sq ft and am a little concerned what that bill will be.

I called Reliant before I switched to see if they could do better than 15.8 and they said 14.4 was as low as they could go.

[texas-digerati]

I found them to be reasonably priced and fair to deal with.
You can find them here <a href="http://www.directenergy.com/EN/Texas/RES/Pages/ELE/ElectricityPlans.aspx">Direct Energy</a>

[XodoX]

I'm with Startex Power and the dezember bill was 12.8 cents/kwh

[Josci]

I use Stream Energy...so far so good

[ErikU19]

I locked in 13.4c/kw for 2 years with the ability to 're-lock' the rate if it goes lower.

I would expect rates to continue to decline with the fall in prices of commodities...

I cant remember the company name...was not reliant

[XodoX]

Last winter I paid 8 cent per KW/h ....