Texans Overpaid About $480 a Year for Electricity, a New Report Says. Here Are 5 Plan Tricks to Check on Your Own Bill

Last updated: October 7, 2026

The report that put a number on it

If you live in a competitive part of Texas, you picked your electricity plan, and there’s a decent chance you haven’t looked at it since.

A report published this year by Laurel Peltier of Retail Energy Revealed, a consumer-advocacy project, argues that inattention is expensive. Using U.S. Energy Information Administration data, it estimates Texas retail-choice households paid about $4 billion more in 2024 than regulated-utility rates would have cost — roughly $480 per household — and more than $48 billion nationally since deregulation began. The Dallas Morning News Watchdog column and a Forbes piece by University of Houston economist Ed Hirs amplified the findings this summer.

The report’s Texas page lays out the comparison: competitive-market customers averaged about 16.7¢ per kWh in 2024, versus about 13.6¢ for El Paso Electric and Entergy Texas, two regulated utilities outside the competitive market. Peltier’s core argument is that retailers win customers with short promotions, then profit when most people never re-shop.

Worth knowing: the report’s own Texas page also shows a smaller figure (about $400 per family, $2.8 billion total) when using a different comparison group. The exact number depends on which baseline you choose.

The other side of the story

Not everyone accepts the math. Retail-choice defenders, including the R Street Institute in its response to similar earlier analyses, make three main points:

• Apples to oranges. Co-ops, city utilities and utilities outside ERCOT have different cost structures and sit in different wholesale markets, so their rates aren’t a clean “what you would have paid” benchmark.
• EIA data is blunt. Averages from federal survey data don’t capture each household’s full bill or plan features.
• Fixed rates are insurance. Retailers who sell fixed-price plans absorb wholesale price spikes, like those during Winter Storm Uri. That protection has value a simple rate comparison misses.

You don’t have to settle the deregulation debate to act on it. Both sides agree that bad plan fit and inattention cost people money. That part you control.

The 5 plan tricks to check on your own bill

Coverage of the report has focused on a handful of plan designs. None are illegal — all are disclosed on the Electricity Facts Label (EFL) — but each can make a plan cost more than the headline price suggests.

1. Promotional and introductory pricing. The rate that caught your eye may only reflect the 1,000 kWh column, or a short promo. The EFL’s average prices at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kWh are what to compare.

2. Bill-credit thresholds. Many plans pay a fixed credit only when usage lands at or above a set level. Miss it by a few kWh and the effective rate jumps for that month. Thresholds vary by plan, so check your own EFL. We break down how these work in How Many kWh Do You Need to Hit Your Texas Bill Credit?

3. Tiered pricing. Some plans charge different rates at different usage bands. A plan can look cheap at exactly 1,000 kWh and expensive at 600 or 1,800. If the three EFL average prices are far apart, the plan is tuned to one usage level.

4. Silent rollover to a variable rate. When a fixed contract ends and you don’t pick a new plan, you typically move to a month-to-month rate that is often priced above what you’d get by shopping. The report points to low re-shopping rates as a key driver of the overpayment. See Your Texas Electricity Contract Is About to Expire for how expiration notices and the no-fee window work.

5. Free nights or weekends that don’t fit your home. These plans fund the free hours with a higher daytime rate. They work for homes that shift a lot of usage into the free window and cost more for homes that don’t.

What to do this week

1. Find your real rate. Take your last few bills and divide the total by the kWh used. That’s your all-in price, including delivery charges.
2. Pull up your EFL. Look at the three average prices, any bill credit or minimum-usage fee, and the contract end date.
3. Check your usage spread. If your monthly kWh swings widely between summer and fall, plans built around one usage level are a poor fit.
4. Put your contract end date on a calendar. Shopping before it ends keeps you off the rollover rate.
5. Compare at your own usage. A plan’s 1,000 kWh price tells you little if your home uses 650 kWh in October and 2,100 in August.

Exact figures — credit amounts, thresholds, fees, contract terms — vary by plan and provider. Your EFL is the source of truth for your home.

If you’d rather not do the math by hand, WattKicker tracks your bill-credit threshold, shows your plan’s pricing tiers, sends contract-expiry alerts and lets you test a free-nights plan against your real usage before you switch.