Utility Commission called power to choose org that's the
website that we'll be using today but if you' re outside of Texas there's still
different options so you can look at websites such as electric choice com that
will offer similar plan options but it will be for a variety of different
states all right so we've gone to power to choose org and the first thing that
it's asking us to enter in our zip code so we're a put in the zip code here and
it gives us two different options we're go with the one that says narrow your
search and it's going to ask us three question sit I'll help to narrow down the
options and you'll see here the first one is
how much electricity do you use in a month this is probably
the single most important thing to picking the right plan so this will get us
in the ball park we're going to go with a thousand to 2,000 kilowatt hours for
now and you'll see how important this is before the end of this video the
second question is what type of plan are you interested in as far as the
different rate structures and we're go nna go here with a fixed rate now some
of these other ones would be variable would mean that they change with the
market you'll see that there's variable components to how they structure the
rates but fixed means that it's going to be fixed pricing for the term the
contract it's not going to change as market pricing changes the third question
that it's asking us is how long do we want our contract to last our typical
recommendation would be 12 months or a year you can go shorter so if you can go
down to three months or maybe six months or you can go longer up to maybe 36
months what you'll find is that the shorter term contracts are often lower
price this means because they are geared more toward seasonality so for example
if you do a six-month contract here in the fall as you're heading into winter
the winter Compare electricity
prices are normally lower especially somewhere like Texas and that means
that it may be lower for the six months of the contract but when you come up
the next summer and you extend it then it's going to be higher pricing anyway
so the twelve months kind of averages that out now if you go with a 36 month
contract let's say what's going to happen is you're gonna have a higher price
through the whole period because you're more protected against any market price
increases as you go out further one other thing to think about here is the
impact of termination fees most of these contracts will have a termination fee
if
you read the fine print typically they won't
charge you for that if you are just relocating or moving but if you cancel it
for some other reason Then you would have that penalty so you may want to stay
with the shorter term contracts like a year two to reduce some of that risk of
having to cancel the contract we're getting a note here about minimum electricity
usage there are minimum charges that you'll often find regardless of how much
electricity you use we're going to look at that in more detail
