Your renewal notice is a test, and Power to Choose is not the answer key.
Power to Choose is the state's shopping board for electricity plans. It is paid for by referral commissions when you enroll — so it behaves a lot like a marketing site. It ranks plans by their price at exactly 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month, a number most North Texas houses never hit. That gap is where the cheapest-looking plan on the board quietly becomes one of the most expensive on a real bill.
From an audit on 1 September 2026 for a University Park home using about 37,400 kilowatt-hours a year. The plan advertising 6.4¢ per kWh was really closer to 16¢ once you left the marketing sweet spot.
What we actually do
Every plan has to publish three prices. That is enough to see the whole bill.
Texas makes every electricity company publish its average price at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a month — wires charges and bill credits included. From those three numbers we can recover the real rate you pay and any credit that only kicks in near 1,000 kWh.
Run that against twelve months of your own usage instead of a made-up average, and the ranking changes. The honest answer depends on your house — which is why a single statewide ranked list cannot be right for everyone.
Quick check
How far off is your current rate?
Two numbers off your latest bill. This compares you with a recent solid fixed rate on the Oncor wires. It is a sanity check, not the full audit.
Your bill shows this. Guess high if unsure; summer pulls the average up.
On the bill as "average price per kWh". If missing, divide the total by the kWh.
a year above the best fixed rate on the board, which works out to 11.02¢ all-in at your usage against the 14.5¢ you are paying. That is $63 a month.
This assumes steady usage. If your bill swings hard between February and August — and in Texas it does — the real gap can move by hundreds. That swing is why the full audit reads your year, not one average month.
The audit
Three steps. You keep the passwords.
- 01Share how much you useA Smart Meter Texas download, twelve months from your bills, or a short estimate if you just moved. Meter files stay on your computer — we only get the monthly totals.
- 02We price every live offer against your yearMonth by month, credits and fine print included — and we call out the tricky plans.
- 03You get one clear pick and the full listYearly cost, runner-up, early-exit fee, a signup link, and the ranked table so you can double-check us.