Texas plan checker

How to use this tool

This checker reads one export of Texas retail electricity offers from Power to Choose, the Public Utility Commission of Texas shopping site. The count and the retrieval date are printed above the filters. Plans change daily. The table is that file, not a live quote, and it will not show an offer that was posted after the export.

Filter by delivery utility first if you know your transmission and distribution utility. The menu lists the TDU names as they appear in the file. Leave it on all TDUs only when you are browsing. Then type part of a retailer's name or a product name. The English-listings box is on by default and hides rows the file marks as Spanish. Turn it off to see those rows. The cliff-flag box hides everything that was not flagged.

A cliff flag is on when any of three things is true. The file marks minimum-usage fees or credits. The fees and credits field is not empty. Or the disclosed price at 500 kWh is more than 15 percent above the disclosed price at 1,000 kWh. The flag is a property of the row in this export. It is not a prediction of your bill. Read the electricity facts label linked from the plan before you treat a low 1,000 kWh price as the price you will pay.

The three price columns are dollars per kWh at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh, as disclosed in the file. Your kWh box does not interpolate between them. The estimate multiplies your kilowatt-hours by whichever of those three prices is closest. A tie keeps the lower level, so 750 kWh uses the 500 kWh price and 1,500 kWh uses the 1,000 kWh price, when that cell exists. If a cell is empty, that level is skipped. The caption under the estimate names which level was used. This is not a reconstruction of the base charge, the delivery charge, or a bill credit. Those details are on the facts label.

Sort order is the 1,000 kWh price, lowest first. A plan at the top can still be a poor fit if the 500 kWh column is much higher, if the term is short, or if the facts label shows a credit that disappears below a usage threshold. The row also notes time-of-use when the file does, and a minimum-usage flag when the file does. Term months, a cancellation fee, and the renewable percentage are in the export and are not all printed in this table. Open the facts label for those fields.

Use the bill calculator for the delivery utility's EIA-861 delivery average, and use the rate-history tool for that utility's annual delivery price. Neither of those is the retail offer in this table. A retail offer includes energy. A TDU delivery average does not. The methodology page records the export URL, the cliff rule, and the nearest-price rule.