How we calculate

Plan prices

Every morning we download the full list of residential plans from Power to Choose, the Public Utility Commission of Texas plan list. Each plan has an average price per kWh at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kWh of monthly use. These prices already include the delivery charge of your local utility, so they are what you pay per kWh, before taxes.

Prices in your city depend on the delivery company that serves it. All cities in the same delivery area see the same plans.

Typical price

The typical price is the median price at 1,000 kWh: half of the plans cost less, half cost more.

Lowest price, without tricks

Some plans include a bill credit that only applies when you use a certain amount, usually 1,000 kWh or more. At exactly that amount the plan looks very cheap, but use a little less and the price can triple. Our “lowest price” only counts fixed-rate plans without such credits, without prepayment and without time-of-use pricing. We still show the other plans if you ask for them, with a warning.

Estimated bill

At a published reference level, estimated dollars are average cents per kWh multiplied by kWh and divided by 100. The listed average already includes recurring components reflected in that quote, including delivery; do not add them again. Taxes and charges outside the quoted average can change the bill. Check the current Electricity Facts Label (EFL) and Terms of Service.

Benchmark prices are not a single plan

We calculate each median and minimum independently at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kWh. The three points can belong to different offers. A curve made from these points is a market comparison, not a contract you can enroll in. In particular, adding up twelve months on the minimum curve does not identify the cheapest single annual contract.

Consider three fictional fixed-price offers, shown here only to explain the calculation. Their prices in cents per kWh at 500 / 1,000 / 2,000 kWh are:

• Offer A: 10 / 12 / 14. Estimated bills at the three reference levels are $50 / $120 / $280.
• Offer B: 12 / 14 / 10. Estimated bills are $60 / $140 / $200.
• Offer C: 14 / 10 / 12. Estimated bills are $70 / $100 / $240.

The minimum is 10 cents at every reference level, but no offer has all three minimum prices. For a hypothetical year with four months at each usage level (14,000 kWh total), Offer A costs $1,800, B costs $1,600 and C costs $1,640 before taxes. The minimum curve would total $1,400. That $1,400 is a synthetic benchmark, not an available plan. The city shortlist lets you compare the same named offer across the three columns instead.

Calculate a real household comparison

First collect twelve actual billing-cycle kWh readings. For each candidate, use its current EFL and Terms of Service to apply the energy charge, base fee, delivery charges, minimum-usage fees and any credit conditions separately in each cycle. Add the twelve bill estimates and compare the totals. Check the contract duration and cancellation fee separately; do not assume a short contract will renew at the same rate.

A bill-credit offer needs a check on both sides of its qualifying threshold. A time-of-use offer needs interval usage, not just monthly kWh. Our bill-credit worked examples and free-hours calculator explain those differences. They are teaching tools, not an exact reconstruction of every listed plan.

Interpolation and its limits

Our general bill and seasonal comparisons interpolate the average cents-per-kWh value linearly between the three published usage points, then multiply by kWh and divide by 100. Below 500 kWh or above 2,000 kWh the nearest endpoint price is held constant. This approximation can miss a base fee, a tier change or a bill credit. It should not be used to establish the exact cost of a conditional plan or a guaranteed switching saving. City plan tables preserve the published reference-point prices; the three-point shortlist estimates monthly dollars only at those exact reference levels.

What is local and what is shared

A city page combines different geographic levels. Plan offers and delivery charges are attached to the delivery utility area; cities in that area can share them. Housing percentages describe the Census place. Weather estimates and outage history describe the assigned county, not a specific city neighborhood. ZIP and service-area boundaries can overlap, so these geographic associations do not prove that an offer is available at every street address.

Average price Texans paid

This is the average residential price in Texas reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It is published with a delay of about two months and includes all kinds of plans.

Your bill through the year

On city pages we estimate how much electricity a typical home uses each month. We take the average monthly use of Texas homes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (sales divided by customers) and relate it to the weather: how many cooling and heating degree days each month had, from NOAA. That relationship explains about 90% of the month-to-month change in Texas usage. We then apply it to the normal weather of your county (NOAA climate normals, 1991–2020) and price the result with today’s plans in your area.

It is an estimate for a typical home. Homes heated with gas use less in winter; larger homes and pools use more.

Power outage history

Outage history comes from EAGLE-I, a dataset by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy that records how many customers in each county were without power every 15 minutes, based on utility outage maps (licensed CC BY 4.0). “Hours without power per customer” is the total customer-hours without power in a year divided by the number of customers in the county. A “major outage” day is one when at least 5% of the county’s customers were without power at the same time. Some utilities are covered only for part of the period, so totals can be lower than reality.

Delivery charges

Delivery charges are set by the utility and approved by the Public Utility Commission, usually changing on March 1 and September 1. We show a charge only after checking it against the plans’ Electricity Facts Labels.

Complaint scores

Each provider's complaint score comes from the Public Utility Commission of Texas Retail Electric Provider Complaint Scorecard. The PUC groups providers into five roughly equal groups by complaints per 1,000 customers over a rolling six months; 5 means the fewest complaints. It counts every complaint the PUC investigated, whether or not the provider was at fault. New or small providers may have no score yet. The score does not change our price rankings.

Mistakes

If you see a number that looks wrong, tell us. We fix errors quickly.

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