New this month! We analyzed indexed products offers on the Power to Choose website. These products are not the most common ones and we captured some variations the of number of offers and REPs offering such products.
Our team at EnergySavings.com has been capturing daily snapshots of electricity plans from the Power to Choose website. Data collected* are analyzed monthly to give you an understanding of the offers available and the market trends. Grouping the most common plans by category, we analyze the same plan categories every month to give you an apples-to-apples comparison.
TRENDS: AUGUST vs JULY
AEP North Delivery Area– August 2021: Rates and Trends for Most Common Plans1
| Fixed Rate (cents/kWh) 12mo Plans |
Variable Rate (cents/kWh) | |||||
| July | August | Trends | July | August | Trends | |
| Lowest | 9.1 | 9.2 |  1% |
9.7 | 8.7 |  -10% |
| Highest | 12.8 | 12.8 |  0% |
16.9 | 16.9 | 0% |
| Average | 10.6 | 10.8 | 2% |
12.2 | 11.8 | -4% |
| Number of REPs | 30 | 31 |  3% |
10 | 10 | 0% |
1Trends show the percentage change in the rate from the previous month for the same category of products. This table compares the lowest price offered by each REP that offered the respective type of plan in each month. The “Highest” row above shows the highest price among all the lowest price plans offered by REPs offering that type of plan in this region for each month.
In the AEP North delivery area, PESO POWER is also now offering 12 month plan. This provider was offering other fixed rate plans before August but with a different contract length. This energy provider has been certified for less than a year (see here certification by the Public Utility Commission of Texas). This same category lost a provider last month, so we are back to the same exact number of players which is good news for market diversity! Access the full report regarding the last period here.
Looking at the trends, the pricing for the first category did not change much when comparing August to July (only a +1% for the lowest rate and +2% for the average. We captured more variations for the variable rate category: the lowest rate decreased by 10%, explained by SOUTHERN FEDERAL POWER decreasing their prices in August (9.7 cents/kWh in July vs 8.7 cents/kWh in August). Three other REPs followed the same trend and 2 others did the opposite, but the average is a 4% decrease.
AEP North Delivery Area – August 2021: Rates and Trends for Most Common 100% Green Plans1
| 100 % green, Fixed Rate (cents/kWh) 12mo Plans |
100 % green, Variable Rate (cents/kWh) | |||||
| July | August | Trends | July | August | Trends | |
| Lowest | 9.8 | 10.0 | 2% |
10.9 | 10.9 | 0% |
| Highest | 12.1 | 12.1 | 0% |
17.1 | 17.1 | 0% |
| Average | 11.0 | 11.2 | 2% |
13.6 | 13.7 | 0% |
| Number of REPs | 7 | 8 | 14% |
3 | 3 | 0% |
1Trends show the percentage change in the rate from the previous month for the same category of products. This table compares the lowest price offered by each REP that offered the respective type of plan in each month. The “Highest” row above shows the highest price among all the lowest price plans offered by REPs offering that type of plan in this region for each month.
As we see in all the other delivery areas, the new player is AMPRA ENERGY. This provider is part of the same parent company as the new REP in the previous table (according to the certification from Public Utility Commission of Texas). This REP was offering other kinds of 100% green plans before.
Looking at the trends, the market was stable during this summer as there is only a +2% on the lowest and average rates in the first category. This small increase is explained by 3 providers all following this trend.
INDEXED RATE PLANS
- What is an indexed rate for electricity plan? It is the least common rate you may find on Power to Choose. Basically, your electricity price can vary substantially every month: the rate can increase or decrease.
- How is the rate calculated for an indexed rate plan? The price is directly tied to a pricing formula connected to a publicly available index such as ERCOT’s wholesale price of electricity, or NYMEX gas prices.
- What are the characteristics of an indexed rate electricity plan? When the contract term is fixed (commonly 6, 12, 18, 24 or 36 months), there’s usually a termination fee. In other cases, indexed rate products may be month-to-month and not have a termination fee.
You must consult the Energy Facts Label (EFL), Terms of Service (TOS), and Your Rights as a Customer (YRAC) of the plan you are interested in to make sure you understand those aspects as they may vary from one plan to another. To find out more about each kind of rate, consult this article or if you haven’t decided which kind of plan is the best for you, read our FAQ
Overview of Indexed rate plans offered in 2021 in the AEP Texas North delivery area2:
| Energy Providers | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug |
| CHARIOT ENERGY | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GRIDDY ENERGY LLC | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| RELIANT | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| VOLT ELECTRICITY PROVIDER LP | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
2This table shows providers that offered indexed rate plans since the beginning of 2021. The numbers show how many indexed plans the provider offered within the month. When no indexed plan was offered at all, we indicate it with a “0” in the table. When a plan is offered in both English and Spanish, we only counted this plan as one.
Offers decreased dramatically since the beginning of the year.
In terms of the number of offers, we captured 8 plans offered at the beginning of the year versus only 1 last month (August 2021). After two months with no indexed offers at all on Power to Choose (March and April), the number of indexed plans offered went brutally down in May 2021 (from 8 to 1 plan). We can correlate this decrease with the winter storm that shook the entire industry mid-February. Our article here details how the most common plans were impacted with this storm.
Now, looking at the players in this niche market, all but one threw in the towel after the storm …
CHARIOT ENERGY, GRIDDY ENERGY LLC, RELIANT and VOLT ELECTRICITY PROVIDER LP were all offering indexed rate plans on the Power to Choose website at the beginning of the year. All but RELIANT stopped showing offers in May. Again here, we can assume that the storm is the reason for those losses. The 3 providers that stopped showing offers in May 2021 are no longer actively selling retail electricity plans in TX (observed on 9/10/2021).
RELIANT has been offering the same plans since January called “Reliant PowerTracker”. As this is a month-to-month contract, there is no cancellation fee, and their price formula uses the NYMEX natural gas futures contract. According to their special terms, you can expect to see a price change on the 15th of every month.
NYMEX or New York Mercantile Exchange is an exchange where tradable commodities (such as contracts on natural gas) are bought and sold. NYMEX is an independent agency of the United States government and is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Learn more about NYMEX.)
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LIST OF ENERGY PROVIDERS/ PRICES
AEP North Delivery Area – August 2021: List of Lowest Reported EFL Prices for an estimated 1000 kWh’s *
August 2021: Lowest Electricity Prices in Abilene, Texas (or AEP North TDU area): Non-100% Green 12mo-Fixed Rate Plans:
(lowest to highest rate)
| Energy Providers | Rate for 1000 kWh (¢/kWh) |
| THINK ENERGY | 9.2 |
| FIRST CHOICE POWER | 9.7 |
| FRONTIER UTILITIES | 9.8 |
| SPARK ENERGY LLC | 9.8 |
| POWERNEXT | 10.0 |
| 4CHANGE ENERGY | 10.3 |
| DISCOUNT POWER | 10.4 |
| RANCHERO POWER | 10.4 |
| VETERAN ENERGY | 10.4 |
| CIRRO ENERGY | 10.5 |
| WINDROSE ENERGY | 10.5 |
| DIRECT ENERGY | 10.8 |
| SOUTHWEST POWER & LIGHT | 10.8 |
| TRIEAGLE ENERGY LP | 10.8 |
| YEP | 10.8 |
| INFUSE ENERGY LLC | 10.9 |
| TARA ENERGY | 10.9 |
| WTU RETAIL ENERGY | 10.9 |
| AMIGO ENERGY | 11.0 |
| JUST ENERGY | 11.0 |
| PESO POWER | 11.1 |
| V247 POWER CORPORATION | 11.2 |
| PULSE POWER LLC | 11.3 |
| SUMMER ENERGY LLC | 11.3 |
| TXU ENERGY | 11.3 |
| SOUTHERN FEDERAL POWER LLC | 11.4 |
| CHAMPION ENERGY SERVICES LLC | 11.5 |
| RELIANT | 11.5 |
| ENERGY TO GO | 11.7 |
| CONSTELLATION NEWENERGY INC | 11.9 |
| AMBIT ENERGY | 12.8 |
In this month, 52% (16 of 31) of these REPs changed their price. Most of them increased it; only 2 REPs did the opposite: SPARK ENERGY LLC and SUMMER ENERGY LLC. THINK ENERGY offered the lowest price while AMBIT ENERGY offered the highest.
August 2021: Lowest Electricity Prices in Abilene, Texas (or AEP North TDU area): Non-100% Green Variable Rate Plans:
(lowest to highest rate)
| Energy Providers | Rate for 1000 kWh (¢/kWh) |
| SOUTHERN FEDERAL POWER LLC | 8.7 |
| RANCHERO POWER | 10.4 |
| RELIANT | 10.5 |
| SOUTHWEST POWER & LIGHT | 10.8 |
| YEP | 10.8 |
| TEXPO ENERGY | 11.0 |
| NEC CO-OP ENERGY | 12.4 |
| INFUSE ENERGY LLC | 12.9 |
| TXU ENERGY | 13.3 |
| AMBIT ENERGY | 16.9 |
SOUTHERN FEDERAL POWER LLC and AMBIT ENERGY offered the lowest and highest price, respectively. Among these 10 REPs, 6 changed their price during the month. They all decreased their prices within the month of August.
August 2021: Lowest Electricity Prices in Abilene, Texas (or AEP North TDU area): 100% Green 12mo-Fixed Rate Plans:
(lowest to highest rate)
| Energy Providers | Rate for 1000 kWh (¢/kWh) |
| GEXA ENERGY | 10.0 |
| CLEANSKY ENERGY | 10.4 |
| RHYTHM | 11.1 |
| TRIEAGLE ENERGY LP | 11.3 |
| GREEN MOUNTAIN ENERGY COMPANY | 11.4 |
| AMPRA ENERGY | 11.7 |
| PULSE POWER LLC | 11.7 |
| ENERGY TO GO | 12.1 |
GEXA ENERGY and ENERGY TO GO took the lowest and highest price spots in this category, respectively. Two providers only changed their prices during August: TRIEAGLE ENERGY LP increased it and CLEANSKY ENERGY decreased it several times but came back to the original price just before the end of the month.
August 2021: Lowest Electricity Prices in Abilene, Texas (or AEP North TDU area): 100% Green Variable Rate Plan:
(lowest to highest rate)
| Energy Providers | Rate for 1000 kWh (¢/kWh) |
| GREEN MOUNTAIN ENERGY COMPANY | 10.9 |
| INFUSE ENERGY LLC | 13.0 |
| AMBIT ENERGY | 17.1 |
Only INFUSE ENERGY changed its price at the end of the month and decreased it slightly.
* Data obtained from powertochoose.org (Power to Choose) for the days from 8/1/2021 to 8/31/2021. The tables above list the lowest price in cents/kWh offered by each retail electricity provider (REP) for a given type of plan for a monthly usage of 1000 kWh. If more than one product was available from the same REP for a given type of plan, EnergySavings.com only included the one with the lowest rate in its analysis. Please note that as products and rates may change at any time in the day on Power to Choose; EnergySavings.com’s analysis is based on information captured in its single daily snapshot, and therefore cannot guarantee that every product and rate made available in the month has been captured. Please reach out to [email protected] if you feel that any meaningful data has not been captured and EnergySavings.com may, at its sole discretion, issue a correction to the report. The analysis is performed by excluding plans that are marked as “Minimum usage fees/credits”, “Time of Use”, and “Prepaid” according to the data captured from Power to Choose. For more information about the electricity plans mentioned in this report, please consult both the Electricity Fact Label (EFL) and Terms of Service (TOS) for those plans. Those documents are available on the Power to Choose site if the plan is still currently offered. The rates listed may differ if the REP has changed its pricing.