How to Compare Texas Electricity Plans with Your Actual Usage
Every Texas electricity plan advertises three price points: 500 kWh, 1,000 kWh, and 2,000 kWh. These are the tiers PowerToChoose.org requires providers to list. The problem? Almost nobody uses electricity in neat round numbers, and these tiers hide how plans actually behave at your usage level.
Why the Standard Tiers Are Misleading
PowerToChoose tiers create a specific distortion: plans can be engineered to look cheap at one tier while being expensive at others. Here is how it works:
- Bill credit games: Some plans offer a $50 credit when you use at least 1,000 kWh. At 999 kWh, you miss the credit entirely. The 1,000 kWh advertised rate looks fantastic, but your real cost at 900 kWh or 1,100 kWh is much higher.
- Tiered pricing that shifts: A plan might charge 8¢/kWh for the first 500 kWh, then 15¢/kWh after that. The 500 kWh price looks great, but a family using 1,500 kWh sees a blended rate far above the advertised number.
- Seasonal blindness: You might use 800 kWh in March but 2,400 kWh in August. No single tier captures what your year actually looks like.
The core problem: Texas electricity pricing is not linear. A plan that costs 10¢/kWh at 1,000 kWh does not necessarily cost 20¢ at 2,000 kWh or 5¢ at 500 kWh. You need to know how the plan prices your specific usage pattern.
Your Actual Usage Pattern Matters More Than Any Single Number
A typical Texas home uses roughly 1,100–1,200 kWh per month on average, but the monthly swing is dramatic:
| Season | Typical Monthly Usage | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Winter (Dec–Feb) | 700–900 kWh | Less AC, shorter days |
| Spring/Fall (Mar–May, Sep–Nov) | 800–1,100 kWh | Mild temps, moderate AC |
| Summer (Jun–Aug) | 1,500–2,500 kWh | AC running all day in Texas heat |
If you only look at the 1,000 kWh tier, you are optimizing for spring and fall while ignoring summer, which is where most of your electricity dollars go. A plan that is 2¢/kWh cheaper at 1,000 kWh but 1¢/kWh more expensive at 2,500 kWh will cost you more over the year.
How many months land in that summer row is not the same everywhere in Texas. The cooling season on the Gulf Coast and in the Rio Grande Valley — Corpus Christi (78415), Edinburg (78539) — runs longer than it does in North Texas, so those households spend more of the year in the bracket where the summer-heavy plans get judged. If you are shopping in one of them, start from that area's page and its current plan list rather than a statewide average.
How to Get Your Real Usage Data
Texas has one of the best smart meter systems in the country. Most homes have a smart meter that records electricity usage in 15-minute intervals. Here is how to access it:
Option 1: Smart Meter Texas (Most Accurate)
- Go to SmartMeterTexas.com and register with your ESI ID (found on your electricity bill).
- Navigate to "Export My Data" and select a 12-month range.
- Download the CSV file. This contains your actual daily or 15-minute interval usage data.
Option 2: Your Provider's Portal
Most retail electric providers (REPs) show monthly usage history in their online portal. While less granular than Smart Meter Texas, it gives you 12 months of monthly totals, which is enough for meaningful plan comparison.
Option 3: Manual Entry from Bills
Pull out your last 12 electricity bills and write down the kWh used each month. Even this simple step puts you ahead of most consumers who compare plans using a single number.
How Accurate Plan Comparison Works
Once you have 12 months of usage data, genuine comparison becomes straightforward:
- Take each month's actual kWh. January at 750 kWh, February at 820 kWh, July at 2,400 kWh, and so on.
- Calculate what each plan would cost for that month. Use the plan's rate structure (not just the advertised tier prices) to compute the real cost at your real usage level.
- Sum the 12 months. This gives you the projected annual cost for each plan, based on your actual behavior rather than hypothetical tiers.
- Compare projected annual totals. The lowest-cost plan at 1,000 kWh may not have the lowest projected cost over your full year.
This approach catches all the pricing tricks: bill credits that only trigger at certain levels, tiered rates that shift at breakpoints, and seasonal cost differences that a single-tier comparison misses.
Skip the spreadsheets.
Upload your Smart Meter Texas CSV or enter monthly usage, and the calculator compares every available plan in your zip code using your actual usage pattern.
Compare Plans with Your UsageWhat You Will Find
When people switch from tier-based comparison to actual-usage comparison, a few patterns emerge:
- The lowest-cost plan changes. The plan ranked #1 at 1,000 kWh frequently does not have the lowest projected cost once you factor in summer months at 2,000+ kWh.
- Fixed-rate plans often win for high-usage summers. Variable and tiered plans look attractive in mild months but can spike during Texas summers.
- The savings gap is real. We regularly see $200–$500/year differences between the plan a consumer would have chosen by tier vs. the plan with the lowest projected cost for their pattern.
The bottom line: your electricity bill is determined by your usage pattern, not by a hypothetical 1,000 kWh month. Compare plans the same way.
Start From the Plans You Can Actually Buy
Before running the math, it helps to see the list you are running it against. Plan availability in Texas is set by the utility that owns the wires in your area, not by your ZIP — so Richardson (75080) and Keller (76244) shop from the same Oncor list, Houston (77084) from CenterPoint's, and Georgetown (78626) from TNMP's. Each area page shows the current rate range and a sample of what is offered there; when you are ready, run your own 12 months against the full list.