Texans most affected by the retail electricity deregulation rip-off!! (Houston: appliances, credit)

[Houston456]

Well, Have your income increased 64 percent between 1999 and 2007 ? Probably not! But your electricity rate did increase that much. Thanks to the deregulation rip-off.

Texas leads in deregulated power price rises (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6255198.html - broken link)

[desertsun41]

Yea I saw that on the news. I always said degregulation does not work. Im right again. In theory it is supposed to create competition which in theory will make prices come down. But what really happens is all the company owners get together and sceme together to jack up the prices all together. Perfect example here.

Oh yea the other deregulation disaster......cable TV companes. All the cable companies as well as satellite TV are raising their rates again.

Anyone here get a raise lately? How nice it must be to just raise rates at will. I betcha no employee in those electric companies will get a pay raise to go with this rate increase. Oh yea I forgot, all the CEOs will get a very large one.

[XodoX]

One of the reasons why I would leave Texas immediately if I could... Youi get ripped off here pretty much anywhere. My rate is 3 cents/kwh higher than it was last year!!

[jfre81]

This is of course opposed to anywhere else where nobody ever gets ripped off, right?

Not saying this whole deregulation thing wasn't a scam shoved down everyone's throats by Enron types and their government enablers.

[sbhubbell]

I went through deregulation in Pennsylvania and the same thing happened there...rates went up.

Yeah go ahead and leave Houston, the cheapest and strongest economically large city in the nation these days. I have personally be shocked by just how much more money I have here at the end of the month than I had in Philly. I mean I knew it would be cheaper, but wow, in practice it's more than I could have imagined.

Oh, and as for raises? I got a fat one last week! WOOT. Infrastructure is where it's at right now

[Winebrat]

Help me understand how TX compares with my electric bill in PA. We are going to be deregulated this year (The Poconos). I will hopefully be in TX by then, but based on the prices here, how does it compare there? Not usuage, so much, because we don't have AC, but what part of the bill gets choice in TX?

Residential Rate: RS for Jan 7 - Feb 4
Distribution Charge:
Customer Charge 8.32
200 KWH at 2.89200000¢ per KWH 5.78
600 KWH at 2.63000000¢ per KWH 15.78
172 KWH at 2.47900000¢ per KWH 4.26
PA Tax Adj Surcharge at-0.06400000% -0.02

Transmission Charge:
972 KWH at 0.75200000¢ per KWH 7.31

Transition Charge:
200 KWH at 1.21000000¢ per KWH 2.42
600 KWH at 1.07300000¢ per KWH 6.44
172 KWH at 0.99100000¢ per KWH 1.70

Generation Charge:
Capacity and Energy
200 KWH at 5.94900000¢ per KWH 11.90
600 KWH at 5.23100000¢ per KWH 31.39
172 KWH at 4.80000000¢ per KWH 8.26
PA Tax Adj Surcharge at0.01300000% 0.01

Total PPL ELECTRIC UTILITIES Charges $103.55

[tstone]

You're paying about 10.65 cents per kWh if I did the math correctly.

You'll be paying about 20-40% more per kWh here if you do your homework. If you don't stay on your bill every month, it could easily be double.

[Winebrat]

Thank you. Using your number, now I see how it works. We are hoping to convert to mostly or all solar eventually for the $ aspect, not the "global warming" aspect.

[tstone]

Solar is awfully cost prohibitive. I don't think it ever really pays for itself. In additoin, we may have a tropical storm every 2-3 years, a moderate hailstorm every 10 years, or a major hurricane every 25 years that could knock your extremely expensive gear out.

When you have to replace appliances, spending the extra money up front tends to pay for itself- Go energy star. Go natural gas for heating the house - it's cheap and you rarely use it. And a new, efficient AC system with the ozone-friendly freon (R-410-A Puron) works wonders with a fancy, programmable t-stat. CFL bulbs help little by little, and I've had some that have lasted 6 years and are still going. However if you're concerned about ambience/quality you'll need to upgrade your fixtures so they filter out the strange glow they can give off if they're bare. Also research "Kelvin" temperature or you'll wind up with bright blue, grow lights everywhere.

After all is said and done, they should pay for themselves at best if you can DIY-install like I do. The extra expense up front with the AC is usually negated by a large tax credit + the first 3-4 years of electric savings. Whatever the case, I'd rather spend the money on supplies rather than burn up extra energy.

(Some from the tin-foil hat crowd say the whole de-reg thing was a conspiracy to force Texans to become more energy efficient...... )

[SilverWings]

Originally Posted by tstone

After all is said and done, they should pay for themselves at best if you can DIY-install like I do. The extra expense up front with the AC is usually negated by a large tax credit + the first 3-4 years of electric savings. Whatever the case, I'd rather spend the money on supplies rather than burn up extra energy.

Hmm... please elaborate on this Tax Credit thing. My Electric bills are horrible, (topping $600 in the summer) maybe I should consider this. My system is 12+ years old so I'm wondering if it's a bit obsolete or not.