If you are looking to save some money on your electricity bill, TXU might just have the plan for you.
The electricity company is offering deep discounts of electricity used at night that could shave dollars off customers’ bills, the company said. The company is offering 6.8 cents per kilowatt for customers who use electricity from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
TXU says people can save dollars on their bills by running their dishwasher, swimming pool pumps, doing their laundry or charging the electric vehicles at night.
“Our new rate plan offers financial incentives for residential customers to change their energy habits, and it can reduce pressure on household budgets at the same time,” said Nancy Perry, TXU senior vice president of sales and marketing.
The 6.8 cent per kilowatt rate is part of the company’s new three-tiered electricity plan that gives customers different rates for nighttime, off-peak and peak hours.
Here is how the prices break down:
- 6.8 cents per kilowatt from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. all year (nighttime)
- 21.9 cents per kilowatt from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday though Friday from May to October. (Peak time)
- 9.2 cents per kilowatt all other times (off-peak time)
The plan is available to anyone who has a smart meter installed at their homes and lives in an Oncor or CenterPoint Energy service area.
TXU says the new plan could solve energy demand issues involving electric cars, and it could also drive down the cost to charge the vehicles up.
“Since most owners will charge electric vehicles at night, TXU Energy’s new time-of-use plan makes electric vehicles more economical,” said Russ Keene, president of the Plug-In Texas coalition. “Any incentive that spurs EV adoption is a win all around. In addition to curtailing an individual’s gasoline expenses, electric vehicles can improve the state’s air quality and reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.”
Let’s see. I can save $0.17 off a load of dishes, but I’ll have to pay an addition $100.00 for air conditioning. I’ll pass.
I’m sure there are a few people whose lifestyles will actually make this a good deal, but I’ll be amazed if they even get 100 people to sign up for this.
Yea, run the pool pumps a night. Fight the green stuff in the day. Sleep after work and get up at mid night to live.
I could live with that. The on-peak (summer weekday afternoon) price is clearly to be avoided. But that’s not much consumpion unless I’m at home, ie. on vacation. All the more reason to make the most of my vacation time (to be away for more of it).
Simply set up a battery system, charge it at night, use it when you want to…
SMART METERS ARE ONLY GOOD FOR UTILITY COMPANY EXECUTIVES
Concepts and theory sounds great, but upon closer inspection:
A. Utility bills are increasing where smart meters are installed, not decreasing.
B. Customer information from smart meters is NOT formatted for customers and does NOT change customer behavior towards conservation.
C. Increased utility rates may decrease energy usage, but that can be done with inexpensive time-of-use meters, NOT requiring expensive smart meters.
D. The cost – benefit of smart meters is horrendous and is being promoted to profit the utility companies and their suppliers, not customers or our society or our environment.
E. The Smart Grid does NOT use or require a smart meter on each home. The necessary smart information can be gathered much more efficiently and timely and inexpensively at energy distribution points. (The smart grid does not care how much power any one home uses.)
F. The vast amount of unnecessary and nearly useless information to be handled and stored may actually end up raising energy usage.
G. This massive Billions-of-dollars smart meter program will leave NO funds for programs that would truly bring energy saving solutions and the public will not be receptive to real solutions after being burned by these Smart meters.
Optional now, mandatory later. We have to have a way to phase in wind power and other renewable energy sources. As far as the suggestion to install a battery, that is a valid suggestion. My father grew up in Ovalo, Texas, which got a power system in 1940 from West Texas Utilities via a REA Loan. In 1920 his father set up a windmill electric generator which charged a battery. They never ran out of power.
My parents up in Yankeeland have a plan like this. Correction, they HAD a plan like this, but abandoned it because it was too much of a PITA to schedule everything to run between 10PM and 6AM. A load in the dishwasher is fine, but what about laundry, lights, heat (all electric house up above the 40th parallel), and even the TV. My folks are old. They really don’t stay up past 10PM, and that plan was actually costing them sleep to try and save a buck.
It’ll be worse here. Imagine paying 22 cents a kWH for air conditioning, in Houston… in August. No thanks.
I had to laugh at the enticement they gave when they mentioned we could charge our electric car between 10PM and 6AM. Wow, that’ll appeal to the twenty-four Texans who have purchased either the Volt or the Leaf.
Doing laundry at 2am not on my list. I can delay my dishwasher, but how much electricity can that possibly use.