Thousands of Texans have taken advantage of SaveOnEnergy.com to lock-in a low electric rate for 12, 18, or 24 months, if not longer.  However, because customers tend to “set it and forget it” when it comes to choosing an electric company, customers often forget when their low, fixed rate ends, exposing them to a higher price.

When a customer’s contract expires, the customer has the right to select any product or provider they desire.  However, if the customer isn’t keeping track of their contract, they may take no action, simply because they aren’t aware their contract is expiring.  If a customer doesn’t take any action when their contract expires, Texas electric providers have the right to place customers on the provider’s “default” rate.

These default rates can be much higher than both the customer’s current rate, and other rates in the market.  Worse, these default rates change month to month, and follow any price spikes seen in the energy market.

As noted by one Forth Worth Star-Telegram correspondent, these default rates can triple a customer’s electric bill.  One customer ended up with a $550 monthly electric bill, when their bill is normally less than $200, because their contract had expired, and their provider moved them to a default rate.

While Texas energy suppliers must notify customers of contract expiration, the notification process is not robust.  Suppliers are required to mail or email a contract expiration notice.  However, mailed notices often wind up with junk mail discarded by the customer, since the notice may be separate from the customer’s normal monthly bill.  Electric companies may also email customers a contract expiration notice, but customers may not be expecting such important legal information in their email inbox, and may have given their provider a secondary email address, for privacy and spam concerns, which they do not check often.  While electric suppliers must have a customer’s “consent” to send legal contract notices via email, such consent usually amounts to the supplier informing the customer, in the lengthy Terms Of Service which many customers do not read, that the customer automatically consents to email notice unless the customer objects.  Many customers are thus unaware they’ve unwittingly agreed to receive important contract notices via email.

This is why you need to check your energy rate every month, and compare it against prices in the market.  Fortunately, comparing energy rates takes only a few seconds using SaveOnEnergy.com.  All you need is your bill, which will state your energy rate listed as “the average price you paid for electric service this month,” or a similar description.  You can then go online to SaveOnEnergy.com, enter your zip code, and see the lowest electricity rates in Texas.  Determining if you’re paying too much for electricity can be done any time day or night, meaning there’s no excuse for not checking your energy rate.

However, so far this summer, Texas electric rates have remained low, meaning it’s still a great time to lock-in a low, secured fixed rate for electricity when you get that first summer power bill.  SaveOnEnergy.com is Texans’ one-stop shop for finding a low electric rate and comparing the different offers and options from energy suppliers.

Even though the weather has heated up, which typically pushes Texas electric rates higher, rates have remained relatively stable over the past two months, and the great deals that were available in the spring are still around.

Texas electric rates remain at historic lows because of reduced demand due to the recession, and a much lower price for natural gas, the main driver of Texas electric prices.  Last week, even as a heat wave boosted power consumption across much of the United States, natural gas prices were down another 6% as storage inventories continued to grow. 

This means great deals on electric rates are still available to Texans.  For example, customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex (at Oncor) can lock-in a low, fixed rate for electricity for just over 9¢ per kilowatt-hour.  In Houston (at CenterPoint), low fixed rates are available for just above 10¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is half of what the prevailing Texas electric rates were just two summers ago.  Customers need to lock-in a low electric rate now to take advantage of these historic low prices, and avoid any potential spike in Texas electric rates, such as the rates of more than 20¢ per kilowatt-hour seen during the summer of 2008.

If you’ve put off shopping for a low electric rate until seeing that first monster power bill of the summer, there’s still time to act.  SaveOnEnergy.com offers customers the fastest and easiest way to compare the lowest electric rates in Texas, allowing customers to save money on their power bills with just a few clicks of the mouse any time day or night.

Most customers want to go green to help the earth, but believe they’ll have to pay more to do it.  With SaveOnGreenEnergy.com forcing electric companies to compete against each other, that’s no longer the case.

For example, customers using SaveOnGreenEnergy.com in both the Dallas-Fort Worth (Oncor) and Houston (CenterPoint) regions can lock-in a low-fixed rate for 100% pollution-free power for a price in the 10-cent per kilowatt-hour range.  That’s only 10% more than the low rates for so-called “brown” power that doesn’t contain any green content.  More importantly, today’s prices for green energy on SaveOnGreenEnergy.com are about half of what brown power cost just two years ago, when spiking natural gas prices caused conventional power prices to skyrocket.

Customers buying clean, renewable electricity don’t have to worry about market fluctuations in the cost of natural gas, coal, or oil.  Locking-in a low rate for a wind power product shields customers from the rate volatility associated with conventional electric products, providing customers with guaranteed savings in addition to a reduced carbon footprint.

SaveOnGreenEnergy.com is Texans’ one-stop shop for finding a green energy provider.  By harnessing the power of competition to make green energy companies face off head-to-head, SaveOnGreenEnergy.com ensures Texans get the lowest rate for their green energy, meaning going green doesn’t cost a lot of green.  SaveOnGreenEnergy.com also boasts all of the features that make its sister site SaveOnEnergy.com the top source for choosing an electricity provider.  SaveOnGreenEnergy.com provides an easy to understand comparison of renewable electric rates, while also highlighting unique and value-adding features of different green products, such as rewards points, cash back, airline miles, and other bonuses.  This means going green doesn’t have to be a hassle, and can be done in just a few minutes at any time, day or night.  That means Texans can start saving money and helping the environment faster by choosing a renewable energy product using SaveOnGreenEnergy.com.

If you haven’t checked your energy rate since 2008, when electric rates reached historic highs, you’re probably paying too much for electricity.  In the summer of 2008, spiking natural gas prices and record usage pushed Texas electric rates above 20¢ per kilowatt-hour.  To avoid further price spikes, may customers locked-in rates of 17¢, 18¢, or even higher, to give themselves some price security until the markets calmed down, and prices started dropping.

But many Texans haven’t compared their energy rate as prices have fallen over the past two years.  As a result, even though most Texans can find a low, fixed rate in the 9¢ per kilowatt-hour range, millions of Texans are paying inflated rates of 15¢ per kilowatt-hour, if not more.

Another reason many Texans are overpaying for electricity is that they’ve never checked their energy rate since competition started in 2002.  They’ve always stayed with the successor to their old monopoly utility: the so-called “incumbent” provider like TXU in the Dallas area, or Reliant Energy in the Houston area.  For these customers who have never shopped, the incumbent providers typically charge higher rates with more built-in profit — typically at least 5¢ per kilowatt-hour above the lowest rate they offer to new customers — because they don’t expect these non-shoppers to compare their rates against competitors.  These higher incumbent prices can raise bills by over $50 per month, or $600 per year. 

That’s why you need to check your energy rate and shop for a lower rate using SaveOnEnergy.com, which provides Texans with the simplest way to compare the lowest energy rates in the market.  If you’re paying more than 12¢ per kilowatt-hour, you are simply paying too much money for electricity for no reason.  Even premium products like renewable energy or plans that guarantee price security for an extended 24 months are below 12¢ for most parts of Texas.  You can still enjoy the same reliable service from a vetted and screened energy provider when choosing a lower energy rate using SaveOnEnergy.com, all while saving hundreds of dollars per year.

Texas electric rates typically rise during the summer as the large amounts of air conditioning used by Texans to keep cool strain the electric grid, and require more power to be generated.  This extra power, generated by the most inefficient plants which are pressed into service only during such “peak” times, can raise electric rates for customers who haven’t locked-in price protection.

Fortunately, Texas electric rates are still at historic lows, and haven’t substantially increased from the springtime, which is usually the best time to shop for power.  That means if you’ve put off shopping for a low electric rate because you’ve been too busy, you still have a great opportunity to find a new energy provider offering a secure, low fixed rate for 12 months, or longer. 

In the summer of 2008, Texas electric rates spiked to as high as 20¢ per kilowatt-hour — or even more — due to record demand as well as high natural gas prices.

Compare that to the low rates available today.  For example, a customer in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area (at Oncor) can lock-in a fixed rate for a little more than 9¢ per kilowatt-hour for 12 months, a savings of over 50%.  And that low rate isn’t a teaser rate, it’s guaranteed to provide customers with a low, reliable rate for a year, shielding them from any extreme price spikes that the electric market experiences.  Rates in the Houston area (at CenterPoint) are a few tenths of a penny higher, but are still a great value compared with prices over the last five years. 

As the weather gets hotter and hotter, the opportunity to lock-in a low electric rate may disappear, so customers should take advantage of today’s low prices to guarantee themselves price protection.

Only SaveOnEnergy.com offers its exclusive retail exchange portal, in which up to eight competing energy suppliers compete directly for your business.  The exchange portal is like an online clearinghouse (think LendingTree.com) where new energy providers produce customized low rates to meet your supply needs.  Businesses just need to enter some basic information about their electric usage and utility service area, and the information is instantly transmitted to up to eight competing energy suppliers.

One of the many features that sets SaveOnEnergy.com apart from other brokers is that the SaveOnEnergy.com exchange portal allows customers to receive rate offers directly from the competing suppliers.  In this way, customers can be assured that offers are not being “filtered” to favor one supplier.  Other brokers, who act as a go-between in providing the rate quotes to customers, may have an incentive to hold back the lowest rates, because the lowest rates are from a supplier that pays a lower commission to the broker.  Since SaveOnEnergy.com’s exchange portal provides the rates directly to the customer with no middleman, customers can be assured that they are not being steered toward higher rates.

By having up to eight competing energy providers competing for the customer’s business, SaveOnEnergy.com’s exchange portal creates a cut-throat competitive environment that benefits customers.  Suppliers who may hold back their lowest rates when selling to a customer one-on-one (in hopes that the customer does not shop around) can’t afford to do so with SaveOnEnergy.com, because one of the other seven suppliers competing for the customer through the exchange portal will surely undercut them.  In this way, SaveOnEnergy.com ensures that customers get the lowest rates possible, without spending hours and days reviewing and comparing different energy companies and rates.

The Tribune-Review noted that on January 1, 2010, rate caps at PPL Electric Utilities in the Lehigh Valley expired.  As a result, PPL raised its residential electric prices by 30 percent in January.

“Since then more than 420,000 residential customers, or about 30 percent of the total, stopped buying power from the Allentown-based utility,” the Tribune-Review noted, as these customers have realized savings of 10-16% by choosing an alternative electric supplier.

With rate caps expiring at PECO, Allegheny, Met-Ed and Penelec on January 1, 2011, these customers will also soon have the opportunity to choose a new energy supplier to save money on their electric bills.  The Tribune-Review reports that new electric suppliers are making preparations to enter these utility areas to serve residential customers in the coming months, while new suppliers are already making low-prices offers to commercial and industrial customers in these service areas, allowing them to lock-in a low, fixed electric rate before rate caps come off.

More than a dozen competing energy providers are vying for customers at PPL, and such competition has led to a double-digit decrease in rates.  The same number of competing suppliers and downward pressure on bills can be expected in the coming months at PECO, Allegheny, Met-Ed and Penelec.

Pennsylvanians can quickly and easily find the lowest electric rate using SaveOnEnergy.com, which compares the lowest rates from the best suppliers with just a few clicks of the mouse.  SaveOnEnergy.com makes the process of finding a new energy supplier simple and hassle-free for customers shopping for the first time, allowing them to save hundreds on their energy bills in just a few minutes.

The risks from choosing the wrong electric supplier are not just hypothetical.  In other markets where electric competition has allowed customers to save money on their electric bills, there have been energy suppliers that have gone out of business, as can be expected in any market where competition is driving down prices and margins, and only the strong survive.

Pennsylvanians can not simply choose the lowest electric rate when shopping for an energy provider, tempting as that may be.  While a low price is important, customers need to be assured that their electric company can honor that price, whether it be for a short-term contract, or up to 12, 24 or 36 months.  If their energy supplier offers a low “teaser” rate, but can’t stand behind it and goes out of business due to mismanagement or risky plays in the electric markets, customers could be stuck paying extremely high rates for “default” service, which is the safety net service customers are automatically pushed to if their electric supplier goes out of business.  These default rates can be high and volatile, and for some large business customers, they can change every hour of the day, with changes in the wholesale electricity market.  These “hourly” prices can spike as high as thousands of dollars — or more than 10 times the normal price.

Businesses have been exposed to these punitive rates on several occasions in the competitive Texas electric market, particularly in 2008 when five electric providers defaulted and dropped customers to the safety net Provider of Last Resort, mainly due to poor risk management by the suppliers.  Pennsylvania customers must protect themselves against such dangers.  However, researching the 100 electric companies now competing in Pennsylvania would take hours and hours, adding up to weeks if not months.  Moreover, getting a good handle on the competency and capability of each energy supplier in Pennsylvania is a daunting task, as the electric industry is extremely complicated and technical, with limited information available publicly.

That’s where SaveOnEnergy.com can not only save Pennsylvania businesses thousands on their electric bill; SaveOnEnergy.com can also save businesses thousands in hours of research, allowing business owners to focus on what matters, helping their customers and running their businesses.  As noted last week, the experts at SaveOnEnergy.com screen all electric suppliers in the market using a rigorous criteria, including financial strength and management competence.  This includes investigating an energy supplier’s capitalization to ensure that it can weather volatile changes in the electric market; a supplier’s risk management and commodity purchasing strategies to ensure that the supplier is not taking risks with its customers’ money by playing the market; and a supplier’s leadership to ensure that they have a history of sound business decisions and have not broken contracts with customers in the past. 

By relying on the expertise of SaveOnEnergy.com to shop for a lower electric rate, Pennsylvania business customers can be assured that they will not be stranded on a high-priced “default” electric service because their supplier went out of business.  In this way, SaveOnEnergy.com not only provides customers with a low electric rate, but ensures this rate translates into real savings, and doesn’t vanish in just a few months because the supplier went out of business.

Many agents or brokers represent the interest of a single supplier, or perhaps two or three energy suppliers.  These energy suppliers are not necessarily chosen for their low rates or superior customer service; they are chosen because these suppliers will pay the broker the highest commission for any sales.  The broker thus acts less as an independent matchmaker, and more as a supplier’s solicitor, with little difference from being an employee of that energy provider.

SaveOnEnergy.com is different.  Instead of a broker acting as a sales arm of an energy supplier, SaveOnEnergy.com instead provides a platform where energy providers compete directly for your business.  SaveOnEnergy.com does not represent any supplier’s interest, and therefore can offer the lowest rates, but, just as importantly, can also recommend the most reputable and financially sound energy companies.

SaveOnEnergy.com rigorously screens all the electric companies on its exchange portal, to ensure only the best suppliers which provide high levels of value and customer service are recommended to customers.  The energy industry experts at SaveOnEnergy.com vet all suppliers in the market to weed out shaky or fly-by-night operators that don’t have the wherewithal to survive the volatile energy market.  SaveOnEnergy.com also rejects suppliers that don’t value their customers, and have a high rate of complaints or poor levels of customer service.

To ensure that customers find the most respected energy providers, SaveOnEnergy.com applies its demanding criteria to all energy providers in the market, scrutinizing suppliers on numerous factors such as pricing, plan features, payment options, customer services, business ethics, and financial stability.  Specific criteria include, but are not limited to:

Pricing

• Competitive pricing
• Consistent price savings
• Fixed rates and month-to-month options

Experienced Leadership

• Proven financial stability
• Established and trustworthy management team with significant industry experience

Quality Billing System

• Billing accuracy
• Easy to read invoices with no ’small print’
• Usage and rates that are clearly displayed on the bill
• Online account management
• Paperless billing
• Payment options include credit card, automatic bank draft, online or payment by phone
• Bill payment assistance and payment plans

By applying these metrics to potential electric suppliers, SaveOnEnergy.com provides a peace of mind unavailable from other agents in the Pennsylvania energy market, and ensures that customers find not just a low rate, but an electric company that will stand behind it.

On January 1, 2010, the rate caps expired at PPL, fully opening up the Lehigh Valley region to electric competition.  Rate caps had been in place since 1996, and prevented new energy providers from entering the area and offering customers improved products and services and lower rates.

However, since rate caps have expired, new energy companies have flooded the PPL market offering tremendous savings on customers’ electric bills, up to nearly $200 per year for residential customers, and thousands of dollars per year for business customers.  Customers have been quick to choose a competing energy provider offering a lower rate, because customers who didn’t shop faced rate hikes upwards of 30%.  In fact, nearly 400,000 customers at PPL have switched to a new energy supplier since January 1, 2010, including over 330,000 residential customers.  These customers are realizing the huge savings from shopping for a lower energy price, while also experiencing the improved customer service from competing providers.  Additionally, customers who choose a new electric supplier still receive their power over PPL’s reliable transmission wires, and shopping customers are restored just as fast as non-shopping customers during outages.

The benefits from shopping for a lower power rate are now available to customers at the remaining Pennsylvania utilities which haven’t yet fully moved to competition — utilities like PECO in Philadelphia, Penelec, Met-Ed, and Allegheny (West Penn Power).  Although rate caps at these utilities won’t officially come off until January 1, 2011, customers can start shopping now for a lower electric rate to avoid any rate shock when price caps do end.  Dozens of competing energy providers are already vying for commercial and industrial customers, undercutting each other’s rates to win these customers’ business. 

Wholesale prices for electricity are at historic lows, making now the perfect time to lock-in a low energy price with an alternative supplier to avoid rate shock come January 1, 2011.  Customers can find a lower electric rate now and sign contracts today for a forward start date of January 1, 2011, allowing them to take advantage of the current lows in electricity pricing and preparing them for when rate caps come off.  The easiest way for business customers to compare rates of competing energy providers in Pennsylvania is by using SaveOnEnergy.com, which pits up to eight suppliers head-to-head to win your business.  This ensures that you get the lowest electric rate, but without the pain and hassle of finding price quotes from every electric company yourself.  With SaveOnEnergy.com, you can shop online at any time day or night by just entering some information about your business, which is instantly transferred to up to eight competing energy suppliers, who then contact you with their best rates.  Saving money on your electric bill couldn’t be easier.