Continuing SaveOnEnergy.com’s thought-leadership position in the energy industry, SaveOnEnergy.com President and COO David Roylance will lead a panel of industry experts at this week’s KEMA Executive Forum in Dallas, the premier annual event in the retail electric industry. 

Roylance will moderate a panel concerning the link between the wholesale energy markets and the customer-facing retail electricity business, bringing a retail customer’s perspective to a panel that includes representatives from Integrys Energy Services, MP2 Energy, BP North America Gas & Power, and Merrill Lynch Commodities.

As a featured speaker, Roylance, a 25-year energy industry veteran, will again take a leading role in discussing the importance of electric choice to customers, and the improvements which must be made so that customers reap all of the intended benefits from competition.  While electric choice has brought millions of dollars in savings to Texans and customers across other markets in the U.S., Roylance has noted that there remains a “language gap” in how energy providers speak with customers, and how they design their products to meet customers’ needs.  By working with energy companies to find a low power rate but also the “best fitting” product for customers, SaveOnEnergy.com has been helping customers overcome this language barrier for over seven years.

Roylance’s role at KEMA is the latest example of the experts at SaveOnEnergy.com advocating for customers.  Roylance was recently a member of a Dallas Morning News panel which reviewed Texas electric deregulation, highlighting the need for greater customer education and awareness, and the vital role that SaveOnEnergy.com plays in facilitating customer understanding of their electric rate options.  SaveOnEnergy.com founder and CEO Brent Moore is also a frequent guest on Q&A panels and online chats hosted by the Morning News and other newspapers concerning customer-facing electricity issues, such as ways customers can reduce their power bills, increase energy efficiency, and save energy and money.

For over seven years, SaveOnEnergy.com has helped customers navigate the rapidly evolving world of energy choice, finding customers the best rates while assuring them of contracting with reliable and service oriented energy suppliers.  SaveOnEnergy.com has since grown from its initial Texas base to serve customers in all of the deregulated energy markets in the United States for both electricity and natural gas, offering customers a needed and valuable service to audit and verify the price quotes and product claims made by competing energy providers.

Recently, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) — the state’s utility watchdog — said that it will open an investigation into how Texas energy companies market their services under different trade names.  Several PUCT Commissioners expressed concern that the current ability of Texas energy providers to use up to five trade or “assumed” names — in addition to their legally certified name — can be confusing to customers trying to understand who is trying to sell them power. 

It’s simply another reason why customers are better off getting help in choosing the lowest electric rate, by relying on an industry expert like SaveOnEnergy.com.

During a recent PUCT open meeting, Commissioner Donna Nelson noted that some smaller electric providers in Texas are simultaneously marketing under several names.  The use of multiple names can confuse customers and frustrate their efforts to check an energy supplier’s track record, complaint history, and compliance, Nelson said.  Ultimately, the use of multiple trade names can hinder a customer’s understanding of what company is truly trying to sell them power.

There are legitimate reasons why an electric company may want to use one or two “assumed” names in marketing electricity.  For example, the company might be part of a larger conglomerate whose name otherwise does not connote their presence in the electric industry.  Another example is that an electric company may want to differentiate one of its product lines –such as renewable energy service or prepaid service — by branding not only that product with a unique name, but by offering the product exclusively under a different trade name.

Unfortunately, there are also less legitimate reasons for an energy supplier to use multiple assumed names.  As cited by the PUCT, using multiple names, or frequently changing names, could be used to distance an electric company from a history of complaints or a bad public image.  Certainly, there are examples of such actions in other industries.  Although not completely analogous (since it involved a merger and change in corporate structure and not simply the creation of a new assumed name), the rise of the brand AirTran, in place of the much-maligned ValuJet, is a prime example of a company seeking to shed baggage associated with an old name.

Customers, however, can avoid being duped by multiple trade names by using SaveOnEnergy.com, a trusted industry expert, to find the lowest electric rate.  SaveOnEnergy.com’s experts diligently research and screen all energy providers, and track each different supplier’s trade and assumed names.  Only reputable electric companies with proven tracks records of providing customers with low rates and high levels of customer service are recommended by SaveOnEnergy.com, so customers don’t have to worry about whether their electric supplier is just a shell company for another provider trying to hide its history.

Spring officially starts in a few days, and it means it’s time for Texas electric customers to shop for a low electric rate before prices start rising with the summer heat.  SaveOnEnergy.com offers customers a quick and easy way to find and compare the lowest electric rates in Texas, so customers can take advantage of the low energy prices that come with spring. 

Spring has always been one of the best times to shop for a low electric rate in Texas, for several reasons.  First, the spring months of March and April are known as “shoulder” months in the electric industry, during which time customers use less power.  Moderate spring weather means customers are not heating their homes for as many hours as they were doing in the winter, and thus are not using as much electricity, or burning as much natural gas (which drives energy prices).  But temperatures are also cool enough so that customers aren’t running air conditioners all day long, which spike electric usage during the summer months.

Since customers use less power during the spring, demand for electricity is lower during the spring, and prices fall with lower demand.

Because Texans use less power during the spring, there’s also less “congestion,” or traffic, on the state’s electric grid.  During the summer, Texans are using so much electricity for air conditioning, the state’s transmission wires bottleneck like a freeway during rush hour, and the cheapest electricity — such as from wind farms in West Texas — can’t make it into the areas where people consume the most power like Houston, Dallas, and Corpus Christi.  However, because there’s less traffic on the grid during the spring, all that cheap wind power from West Texas can flow east to the large metropolitan areas of the state, and thus lower the energy prices available to customers during the spring months.

Of course, this spring is an even better time to shop for a low electric rate as Texas is seeing its lowest power prices in years.  Reduced demand for electricity and gas due to the recession, coupled with the normal spring price decline, has cut Texas electric rates in half versus the prices seen just two years ago during the spring of 2008.  Texas electric rates are even lower by 10-15% versus the historic lows seen in 2009.

All and all, it makes it the perfect opportunity to lock in a low electric rate before the summer, using SaveOnEnergy.com to find the lowest rate available.  SaveOnEnergy.com screens and reviews the hundreds of electric offers available to Texas customers, and only recommends the lowest rates with the best electric companies, so Texans get the highest value out of their energy dollar.  Finding a low electric rate takes just a few minutes on SaveOnEnergy.com, and can save Texans hundreds of dollars per year.

Not all Texas retail electric providers are created equal, SaveOnEnergy.com President and Chief Operating Officer David Roylance told a recent forum on electric choice hosted by the Dallas Morning News. 

There are over 100 energy suppliers in the Texas electric market, about 30 of which are marketing to residential customers.  “They’re not all created equal,” Roylance explained, even though the Public Utility Commission of Texas strengthened some rules for certification of energy companies last year.

Still, the Texas electric market has some energy suppliers which have stronger financial backing, and some that have higher levels of customer service.  While comparing the hundreds of offers listed on some electric rate comparison websites is not always easy for customers shopping for a low electric rate, it’s child’s play compared to the arduous task of performing due diligence before signing up with an electric company once you find a rate you’re comfortable with (things like checking the company’s financials, its complaint rate, its customer service, etc).  Much of this information is not easily accessible, and the information consumers can find may still be confusing due to the use of multiple names by certain electric companies.

That’s where SaveOnEnergy.com fills a gap for consumers, Roylance said. 

SaveOnEnergy.com is continuously vetting its energy providers every day, so customers can be sure that a provider listed on SaveOnEnergy.com is a reputable and competent provider.

SaveOnEnergy.com acts as a filter, weeding out the pretenders, and only providing customers with the best prices and best values from the best electric companies.

“We turn down more retailers than we accept, not only because they may not meet what we believe are the right thresholds to understanding the market, but also because they’re just not differentiated in their product,” Roylance explained.  If SaveOnEnergy.com already has a wealth of competing low-priced fixed rates, for example, Roylance said that adding another rate from a supplier that has done nothing to distinguish itself or add value for customers only creates more clutter for the customer.  Instead, SaveOnEnergy.com tells suppliers to come back with better offers, either lower prices, or some added benefit customers can receive for signing up, so customers can maximize their energy dollar.

Although SaveOnEnergy.com provides customers with an easy to use filter to find the lowest electric rates, Roylance said that there is still a “huge education gap” in customers’ understanding of electric competition.

That’s why SaveOnEnergy.com isn’t just a filter, but an advocate for customers in dealing with the energy companies — not only in getting customers a low electric rate, but in making sure the electric company lives up to its deal.

“We play a role in helping customers understand the market.  On the front end, by making the offers comparative, and on the back end, by making sure that customers are getting what they bought,” Roylance said.

Although millions of Texas electric customers are saving money by shopping for their energy provider, there is still a big language gap when it comes to customer understanding of competition and choice, SaveOnEnergy.com President and Chief Operating Officer David Roylance told a forum on electric deregulation hosted last week by the Dallas Morning News. 

Roylance, a 25-year energy industry veteran, noted that, under customer choice, “costs have gone from being a source of profit for retailers to a destroyer of profit.”  Roylance explained that, before competition, electric utilities earned profit on their “rate base,” or their retail costs and physical assets like power plants and transmission wires, at a guaranteed rate of return.  That increased incentives for utilities to spend more on operations than needed, because it meant that they had a larger rate base on which to earn a profit.

Under competition, where electric companies only make money by getting customers to choose them, costs have to be as low as possible in order to attract customers with low electricity rates, while offering great service.  These lower operating costs will mean savings for Texas electric customers.

However, today’s energy suppliers still have a “language problem” when it comes to offering customers lower rates and new products under competition, Roylance added.  The industry still talks in kilowatt-hours, a measure of electric usage, but most customers do not think or talk in kilowatt-hours, Roylance said.  Customers think in terms of how much they spend on their monthly electric bill ($100, $150), or how much it costs to set the thermostat at 78 degrees.

Roylance noted that there are some “enabling efforts” underway for energy suppliers to talk in a language more meaningful to customers, and is optimistic that customers will see a shift away from cents per kilowatt-hour to a flat monthly rate in describing the cost of an electricity plan, and in comparing different products.

The lack of a consumer-friendly language makes it “very confusing” today for customers to compare electric rates and providers, Roylance added.  But also confusing for customers is the more than 100 offers available for residential customers from about 30 electric companies.

“SaveOnEnergy is part of the innovation that is trying to fill that gap,” in customer awareness and understanding, Roylance said.  SaveOnEnergy.com seeks out the attractive rates and providers, and posts the best electric rates and products in an easy to understand comparison, instead of a broad laundry list of general offers customers may see elsewhere.

Additionally, SaveOnEnergy.com allows customers to easily compare not just price, but also the many additional benefits that come with certain electricity plans.  While Roylance noted that the value-adding benefits available from some energy providers (airline miles, gift certificates, renewable energy, convenient payment options) are only in their infancy compared to where they will be a few years from now, these bonus features are still attracting customers to electric companies that might not have the lowest rate in the market.

Over 5,000 Texans shop for a low electric rate on SaveOnEnergy.com every month, and about half of these Texans are choosing a plan that isn’t one of the absolute lowest, because they’re opting for a green product, or a product with airline miles, or a bill credit for signing up.  “They’re searching for some other feature that meets their unique needs,” Roylance explained, and SaveOnEnergy.com lets customers quickly identify the features and prices of different plans in a straightforward and simple format, so consumers can click, pick, save, and join the progressive Texans that are benefitting from competitive electricity rates in Texas.