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Total Electric Cost Comparison Spreadsheet, Texas Electric Cost Calculator - Excel file free XLS download workbook file for individuals. Contact me for business, or other than individual pricing. Download CompareElectricRates_Jan2023 if you would like to try the Excel spreadsheet. Make sure macros are enabled. NOTE: Other web sites exists that might help you find a lower priced provider than this program, such as http://www.texaspowerguide.com which might have additional pricing information not included in the PTC online database. I have not looked at any of the other programs recently, so do your own homework. Use this Excel spreadsheet file to shop providers and compare Texas Electricity Rates for YOUR YEARLY electric bill, based on YOUR usage. ONE low KWh usage number is not nearly enough information (like PTC=Power To Choose currently uses) to pick YOUR lowest cost electricity provider, since almost everybody's usage varies greatly from month to month! You might be surprised to see what you find... New File Version (Jan 29, 2023) Added the star ratings from Power to Choose. Lower star rating companies had more customer complaints per subscriber (in the last 6 months). You can decide for yourself how much extra you would pay for a higher rated provider!!! Added the option to use Spanish or English plans. Added a scratch sheet to paste in your imported meter readings and compare last year, current year, and average meter readings. Also simplified the procedure to Update Database/ Import Offers. To save some time while comparing different electric providers, I created this XL spreadsheet to do many of the calculations for you. You will need to download, enter, or estimate your monthly electricity usage to decide which plan is best for you. Look for the kWh usage on your monthly bills from last year and fill it in on the spreadsheet. Take a guess for any missing months. If necessary, adjust the usage for the extra insulation that you recently added to your attic. Make sure to save the file with YOUR usage information on YOUR computer. You will probably find it handy again in about a year. If you have a Texas smart meter, you may be able to download your usage HERE, or see the link in the file. This version of the file allows you to import data from PowerToChoose.org instead of manually entering ALL data. This file should give you a much better chance to find YOUR lowest cost electricity provider than by using the Power To Choose (PTC) web site alone. Try to pick a provider that looks like it will be operational in a year. It is quite a pain when your electricity provider declares bankruptcy (experience speaking here). Also consider other fees--such as the fee for breaking the contract, if that is a possibility. NOTE Jan 2020+: It appears that the Star ratings or some other changes at PTC has rooted out many of the junk plans. I did not notice them at the top of the list when searching for a new power plan. The search was easier than in 2016, but it appears that plan prices are about the same or higher! NOTE Nov 2016: The PTC site was MUCH worse the last time I checked. Providers are custom designing plans to be at the top of the PTC web site list (lowest cost provider) for the 500, 1000, or 2000 kWh pricing points that PTC checks now. Below is an example of what the top rated (lowest cost) plans are starting to look like now on PTC. It is easy to beat the PTC system, since it appears to have been designed for failure. The top rated plans look to be some variation of the worst plan below (different slopes to the lines). This worst plan in the chart below allows you to be the top ranked PTC plan for ALL 3 pricing points, but probably be one of the most expensive plans in the world for consumers to choose. Using the PTC site to pick a plan right now can be very a expensive mistake (Nov 2016)!! Additional details in my proposed FACTS form.
This file allows you to sort the offers by different usage costs, your estimated yearly electric bill, and other items. This file also calculates (guesses) the monthly fee and kWh rates for many providers, so that you only need to verify the numbers for the lower cost providers by reading the FACTS sheet or by calling the provider. You will still need to closely read the FACTS from PTC for a minimum usage fee for less than 500 kWh of usage. This is a popular fee that is currently hidden from the PTC imported data file, since it is not included in the file. You also need to closely read the FACTS because of all of the junk PTC plans being offered now. WARNING!!, Some of them also come up as the best priced plans using my program. There is only so much you can do with the CSV data file PTC offers now. If you want to manually input all of the data yourself, here is an older version of the file. Please make sure to verify all calculations with the provider before you make a decision on electric providers. If you DO NOT agree to verify the calculations, you ARE NOT authorized to download the spreadsheet. You should read off various months of your calculated bill amounts to the new provider candidate and make sure the untaxed calculations roughly match BEFORE YOU SIGN UP. The junk plans being offered now on PTC MANDATE that you input YOUR actual usage numbers, and definitely NOT the numbers 500, 1000, or 2000 kWh. You MUST have EXCEL or another spreadsheet program that opens Excel files on your computer to use this spreadsheet. You need real MS Excel for the latest (MaKro) version of the file. You should use this program to sort the offers by YOUR price for a year of electricity, hidden Fees excluded. The program also allows you to manually input the additional data required for a more exact calculation, after you have manually read the FACTs. If you wonder why this program is necessary and why you have to waste your time manually reading every FACTs label of interest to compare your yearly electric cost between different providers, maybe you should talk to PowerToChoose.org and ask them to explain it to you. Better yet, Email the governor and ask him to explain it. Call your state government representative and ask him. Email your local newspapers or Mr. Trump. Ask them if any of the Electric Providers have donated to their campaign. Ask them if any of their relatives work for an Electric Provider. Feel free to link to this page.
-------------------------------------------------------- It seems to me that the answer is yes. The complete pricing for many of the plans on Power to Choose, can be defined by providing 13 numbers or less to a computer program. The most complex plans could probably be defined by less than 35 numbers. Numbers can be read by computers. Put all these numbers in a database, and you can calculate the lowest cost provider from thousands of plans in seconds. Don't think that is possible to define the plan prices that easily? Look at this file and tell me why not? The numbers that the provider will input are shown with a white background with blue letters. Everything else is calculated. The BLUE background numbers are sent to the CSV database. What do you want to know when you are looking for the lowest cost electricity provider? I want to know the bottom line on how much their plan costs for a year of service. I don't want to read about how much they are paying somebody else, how they are tricking PTC in to a top rating, or how to write a computer program to calculate their price. I just want to know the price. And do you know what else I want? I DO NOT want to read ANY of the FACTS labels. If you put these extra numbers in the PTC CSV database, reading the FACTS is not necessary (except for complicated plans like free nights, etc). Give the 7 million households back the time we wasted reading your FACTS. Give back the Millions/Billions of dollars we wasted on higher cost electric providers. At LEAST give us the 13+ extra numbers per provider in the PTC CSV database, or better yet do the calculations on the PTC web site. So far, Power to Choose has chosen not to collect and save these 10 to 35 numbers in a database to define each plan pricing. Thus, many people continue to waste time and money each year. Still, many people overpay for electricity. In the meantime, the state of Texas (consumers like you and me) pay Power To Choose (Public Utility Commission??) employees for a job well done. How do we solve this problem? It
is actually pretty easy if you really WANT to solve the problem.
Complaint: It will take too much time to do all of that I don't
know how.
Complaint: I do not want everybody to know how much I am charging.
I will not do it.
Complaint: It is not possible to do that. We need an order from
the Texas legislature to do that.
Complaint: It will be too expensive to do that. it is not in the
budget. 2. Put this
information in a CSV database for every provider. 3.
Have a program or web site that will read the database and
calculate the cost for an entire year of electricity for each household, and
give them the top 10+ cheapest providers specifically for their usage. Problem solved. Have we consumers gained anything by doing this? Well, let me see. Maybe 1/2 a billion dollars or more per year? Maybe MUCH more. Google says that there are over 8 million households + maybe 2 million businesses in Texas. Wikipedia.org site says: 85%[1] of Texas power consumers (those served by a company not owned by a municipality or a utility cooperative) can choose their electricity service from a variety of retail electric providers (REPs). Let's say that at least 8 million people can pick their electricity provider. If 2 million people can skip reading these FACTS forms each year (because they are standardized and included in the PTC CSV database) we consumers save a lot of time. If each person saves 60 minutes in their search for a low cost provider, this saves 120,000,000 minutes (228 years) of wasted time every single year. The proposed FACTS file I created allows you to put in your own numbers to do these time/money savings calculations. If 2 million people read the FACTS and ATTEMPT to switch each year, then maybe 4+ million are NOT switching providers each year because it is CURRENTLY a lot of trouble to make an informed decision. Some were probably mislead by top rated junk plan offers and made a poor choice. If the lowest cost provider could be found in minutes and they could save hundreds of dollars, how many people would switch providers each year? Probably more than 4 million. Imagine this
situation: You visit the Power To Choose website and input If each of these 4 million consumers could save $120 per year, then consumers are losing 4 X 120 = $480 million wasted dollars each year going to higher cost electric providers because PTC does not provide the information needed. I have asked the head of the PUC to give me her estimate for these 2 numbers, but no response after years. Why would she NOT start sending out the proposed FREE FACTS form today and start saving consumers all of this this time and money? Another week passes, another $9 million dollars is lost...... If you multiply 480 million dollars by 12 years, you come up with 5.7 BILLION DOLLARS. That should be enough lost time and money that somebody in power would force changes (or somebody would be fired or thrown in jail). Maybe people will start calling and sending emails to their elected representatives, PUC officials, and the media. Maybe you can get the head of the Texas PUC to respond to you or your elected representative. The only thing standing in the way of these savings is getting the required data in to an online CSV database. I was told there is a company that manually does this, handles your switches, and charges $120/year for their service (is the $120 number high enough?). To get this done for everybody else, this will probably take somebody in government to make this happen. Give them a nudge or elect somebody that will fix this..... If people are not wasting time reading FACTS, they might be able to enjoy taking more frequent walks and enjoying life. They might do volunteer work somewhere and save a life. They might get healthier. It might help save their own life. If they donate some of the money they save, this might also save some lives. --------------------------------------------------------
Simple chart to allow easy yearly electricity cost calculations. This
could be the standard FACTS used by all Electric Providers..
Electric provider to fill in red values.
Free electricity
times and dates, if applicable. I have noticed that
there are now 1 or more different companies that will do these calculations for
you. Apparently they get a commission from the company that you
finally decide to use or charge a fee. I do not know anything about them, but I have noticed that: If you would like to make a donation for this spreadsheet, click the BUY NOW! button below and fill in the desired dollar amount --OR-- do some research, find a worthy organization, and THEN make a donation to them. Here is one that I support. Or, send out some emails and make some phone calls to help stop the consumer bleeding. Good luck with it!! |
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