{"id":38345,"date":"2014-08-25T16:55:30","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T21:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=38345"},"modified":"2014-08-25T16:55:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T21:55:30","slug":"whos-getting-the-best-deals-on-electricity-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/08\/25\/whos-getting-the-best-deals-on-electricity-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Who&#8217;s Getting The Best Deals On Electricity In Texas?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"module image alignright mceTemp\" id=\"attachment_14787\" style=\"width: 198px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/07\/93187913.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14787\" alt=\"Climate Change And Global Pollution To Be Discussed At Copenhagen Summit\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/07\/93187913-198x300.jpg\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/07\/93187913-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/07\/93187913.jpg 393w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo by Jeff J Mitchell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>During a meeting of the Texas Public Utility Commission, its former chairman, Barry Smitherman, gave Texans one more reason to love their state and for others to envy it: low, low prices for electricity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you use the best available price in the market place from a retail electric provider Houston and Dallas have the lowest prices of any big city in America. I think we have to be very mindful of the competitive advantage this gives us here in Texas,\u201d Smitherman said at the PUC meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Strictly speaking, Smitherman might be right:\u00a0<a title=\"EIA state comparisons\" href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.gov\/electricity\/monthly\/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a\">the price of electricity is relatively low<\/a>. But if you think that means people in Houston and Dallas have the lowest electricity bills, you\u2019d be wrong. The reality is exactly the opposite because Texans use so much electricity.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/164328475&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For several years now,\u00a0<a title=\"Forbes article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2010\/04\/01\/biggest-power-bills-business-energy-texas-electric.html\">national comparisons<\/a>\u00a0using data reported to the federal government and from other sources show people in Houston and Dallas \u2014 and in Texas overall \u2014 pay some of the highest electricity bills in the country.\u00a0<a title=\"EIA on Texas\" href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.gov\/state\/print.cfm?sid=TX\">According to the U.S. Energy Department<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cThe average annual electricity cost per Texas household is $1,801, among the highest in the nation; the cost is similar to other warm weather states like Florida, according to EIA&#8217;s Residential Energy Consumption Survey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But drilling deeper into the data, what you pay depends on where you live in Texas.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re about 10 cents per kilowatt hour,\u201d said\u00a0<a title=\"Bio\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cpsenergy.com\/About_CPS_Energy\/Who_We_Are\/Executive_Team\/bio_Gold_Williams.asp\">Paula Gold-Williams<\/a>, Executive vice president at CPS Energy. CPS Energy is owned by the City of San Antonio. It\u2019s a non-profit company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe never are chasing the earnings per share, the quarterly result, that sometimes other businesses have to go after,\u201d Gold-Williams told News 88.7.<\/p>\n<p>CPS sells electricity to San Antonio residents at a price that is 10 to 20 percent cheaper than average advertised rates in Dallas and Houston. In those big cities electricity is sold through dozens of for-profit marketers. It\u2019s a de-regulated system developed by the Texas legislature over a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>The original idea was that competition would mean lower prices. But a few cities \u2014 San Antonio, Austin, and San Marcos among them \u2014 did not join the system. In those cities, everyone has to buy their electricity from one, city-owned utility.<\/p>\n<p>In San Antonio, CPS owns its own power plants and has no contracts, no credit requirements, no flexible rate plans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo our pricing is simple and straightforward,\u201d said Gold-Williams.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s one of the reasons critics say the de-regulated system should be overhauled to be more like San Antonio\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom where I sit, any changes would be a long shot. A lot of people who are in power right now are very happy with this arrangement,\u201d said Carol Biedrzycki, executive director of the Texas Ratepayers\u2019 Organization to Save Energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Jeff J Mitchell\/Getty Images During a meeting of the Texas Public Utility Commission, its former chairman, Barry Smitherman, gave Texans one more reason to love their state and for others to envy it: low, low prices for electricity. \u201cIf you use the best available price in the market place from a retail electric [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[14,41],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38345"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38376,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38345\/revisions\/38376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}