Griddy Customer's (Center: credit, calculated, prices)

[ninbud]

What service are you signing up for ?

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by ninbud

What service are you signing up for ?

I suggest a service like Energy Ogre. They charge you $10/month, and they do all the work/research for you. They find the best deal at each renewal time, based on your usage history. Most people aren't aware that all the different plans you see have dramatically different rates based on usage. If you sign up for a cheap plan, that has a "X" cap, and go over it, the price on those extra electrons might be 2-3 times higher than your normal rate. That's one way they make money. Or if you don't use enough, you pay a "$250 usage fee" or some such nonsense.

I used to spend a couple hours every time I had to renew, at that Power to Choose site. So confusing. Now I let Energy Ogre do it. And once you sign up, they keep track of your usage.

I've been pleased so far (year and a half).

PS: This is NOTHING like Griddy. Energy Ogre doesn't actually sell you the electricity. They find it, but the account will be under your name, at wherever (Gexa, Spark, or wherever they find the best deal).

[kreeyax]

Originally Posted by astrohip

I suggest a service like Energy Ogre. They charge you $10/month, and they do all the work/research for you. They find the best deal at each renewal time, based on your usage history. Most people aren't aware that all the different plans you see have dramatically different rates based on usage. If you sign up for a cheap plan, that has a "X" cap, and go over it, the price on those extra electrons might be 2-3 times higher than your normal rate. That's one way they make money. Or if you don't use enough, you pay a "$250 usage fee" or some such nonsense.

I used to spend a couple hours every time I had to renew, at that Power to Choose site. So confusing. Now I let Energy Ogre do it. And once you sign up, they keep track of your usage.

I've been pleased so far (year and a half).

PS: This is NOTHING like Griddy. Energy Ogre doesn't actually sell you the electricity. They find it, but the account will be under your name, at wherever (Gexa, Spark, or wherever they find the best deal).

Power To Choose lets you filter those plans out with minimum usage fees/credits and tiered pricing. It's really pretty simple to find a plan there without any "gotchas". $10/month seems a little excessive to pay a middleman to find a plan for you.

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by kreeyax

Power To Choose lets you filter those plans out with minimum usage fees/credits and tiered pricing. It's really pretty simple to find a plan there without any "gotchas". $10/month seems a little excessive to pay a middleman to find a plan for you.

The challenge is most people aren't familiar with their usage, to the detail that is required to find the absolute best deal on Power to Choose. And I find PtC ain't that easy. Too many plans, too many little variables. Sure, you can filter some items. But it's challenging to get all the rate grids lined up.

I saved 35% in 2020, over 2019. I switched to Energy Ogre in late 2019.

[houston-nomad]

Krugman argues today that we have too much choice. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/o...gtype=Homepage

I find it all exhausting. I found a reasonably-priced plan on TXU that uses all renewable sources and works well for my needs. I'm not going to spend any more time researching to try to save a few bucks a month.

[travelguy_73]

Originally Posted by kreeyax

Power To Choose lets you filter those plans out with minimum usage fees/credits and tiered pricing. It's really pretty simple to find a plan there without any "gotchas". $10/month seems a little excessive to pay a middleman to find a plan for you.

There's quite a bit of evidence that the PTC site is manipulated/gamed by the energy marketers. So for someone who doesn't want to mess with the games, and likes a company that (in theory) I pay to work for ME, not them, Energy Ogre is a good deal.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by astrohip

I suggest a service like Energy Ogre. They charge you $10/month, and they do all the work/research for you. They find the best deal at each renewal time, based on your usage history. Most people aren't aware that all the different plans you see have dramatically different rates based on usage. If you sign up for a cheap plan, that has a "X" cap, and go over it, the price on those extra electrons might be 2-3 times higher than your normal rate. That's one way they make money. Or if you don't use enough, you pay a "$250 usage fee" or some such nonsense.

I used to spend a couple hours every time I had to renew, at that Power to Choose site. So confusing. Now I let Energy Ogre do it. And once you sign up, they keep track of your usage.

I've been pleased so far (year and a half).

PS: This is NOTHING like Griddy. Energy Ogre doesn't actually sell you the electricity. They find it, but the account will be under your name, at wherever (Gexa, Spark, or wherever they find the best deal).

Power2Choose seems to have been designed to present the illusion of comparison shopping while making it nearly impossible to compare apples to apples.


I used to use Centerpoint's TrueCost which was also linked to your meter and calculated average prices based on your actual usage with all fees included. But alas, the site is no more and it wouldn't surprise me if the REP's didn't pressure them to shut it down.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by houston-nomad

Krugman argues today that we have too much choice. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/o...gtype=Homepage

I find it all exhausting. I found a reasonably-priced plan on TXU that uses all renewable sources and works well for my needs. I'm not going to spend any more time researching to try to save a few bucks a month.

All this annual effort to find the best "plan" and it doesn't return us either lower rates or better reliability than a dozen under states. Let's hope they don't get the idea to "deregulate" water so we can annually shop for the best water plan.

[Dopo]

I've done lots of research on this and I've had good luck with Discount Power
from 2018-2020 I was paying about 8c/kwH
I had to renew for 3 years last year and now I pay 10c/KwH

but I've had many people tell me that I'm getting a really good deal

Power to choose has an option to download all their information
I downloaded to an excel file
I have a few tricks to manipulated data in excel files that helped me narrow down what was the best company based on the criteria I was using.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by Dopo

I've done lots of research on this and I've had good luck with Discount Power
from 2018-2020 I was paying about 8c/kwH
I had to renew for 3 years last year and now I pay 10c/KwH

but I've had many people tell me that I'm getting a really good deal

Power to choose has an option to download all their information
I downloaded to an excel file
I have a few tricks to manipulated data in excel files that helped me narrow down what was the best company based on the criteria I was using.

But isn't it silly that you have to do all that? I've had Discount twice in the past ten years. The problem is these REP's seem to bounce back and forth between offering up low rates to attract subscribers then jacking up rates to rake in the profits. I'll research and sign up for about 10 cents then their "special" renewal rate will be 14 cents. And I let my plan expire once and realized three months later I was paying like 22 cents.



Frontier was good a few times. Constellation had it's turn. Currently on Windrose. The bottom line net bill divided by total kwh is 10.6/kwh. It's nice to pay a penny less if you can but the important thing is to stay alert and not let yourself get gouged.