Our electric company, Ameren, is giving us our choice of rate. We can go with a flat rate regardless of what time we consume electricity, or, a higher rate at peak time and a lower rate at off peak time.

Peak time is 9am to 9pm. If I’m reading their explanatory letter right, the difference to us is negligible.

My wife is home all day, and while I still work, I come home for lunch every day. I see no reason to go with the variable rate for $.01 savings per month. Especially so since my spouse said she’s not altering her current daytime use of the washer/drier/dishwasher/etc.

What say you?

Are there any restrictions on the plans? For example, on the flat rate plan, can they throttle your usage during peak usage hours?

Otherwise you would need to compare your previous usage and apply both plans to what you have used in the past to see where the differences fall.

^^^all I know is what they stated in their letter. I don’t see any mention of throttling. Based upon their examination of the last 4 months of our usage, there is .01 of savings per month.

That is unless we change what we do during the day and shift it to 9pm to 9am. Heck I go to bed at 9pm.

The last four months was basically winter...What does your usage look like in the summer? You should consider the heating & cooling equip you have in your home, as well as when that equip runs in winter vs summer, as that likely has the largest impact on your bill.

We have been flat rate for years and ours was recently reduced.

In Florida, the flat raters are getting huge bills.

Be sure it's not just average billing.

When the rates jumped they got bills of $800 to $1000 dollars to make up for the shortfall.

^^^^^^^
I would personally avoid any “average billing” plan. Mother was on that and it required a rather large balloon payment to get her back on a “pay for what you actually use” plan, which is going to be cheaper in the long run. I’m sure someone sold mother on that plan because she would “save money over time”. Mother has ALWAYS been a frugal penny pincher and I’m sure it sounded like a money saving strategy. Nope!

As with anything, YMMV…

quote:

That is unless we change what we do during the day and shift it to 9pm to 9am. Heck I go to bed at 9pm.

I got the same letter... and took the default.
The only possible difference in our activity is that we may wait to start the dishwasher until before we go to bed.

^^^Chellim, was the difference in your letter also just a single penny?

I can't recall... but it wasn't much.
It isn't enough to change my behavior, that's for sure.

I assume the notices are computer generated, but I’d ask the company if that’s a misprint since changing an annual plan to save 12 cents seems ridiculous!

The last four months being winter, their calculations are not going to be representative of your full year experience. You'd want a full year's look including air conditioning season as well as winter before making a change.

Not sure why they didn't give you a look at a full year. It's either lazy on their part, intentionally deceptive, or (best case) an indication that they didn't have the capability of telling your usage by the hour till 4 months ago.

It's worth pointing out that they have carefully hidden in fine print that they are slamming you into the new rate unless you contact them to 'opt' into the current one:

quote:

... you'll start on the Evening/Morning Savers rate option....This change will happen automatically....

In my experience, when companies try to slam changes through in fine print like this, there's generally a reason.

I'd let it go for at least another year, and then see what a full 12 month's data might tell you.

I’d waste the penny of potential monthly savings and continue with the plan I was on.

I just got my renewal notice in the mail.
We're currently on a free nights plan, 8p-5a we get a credit on our bill for the usage.

On the renewal, the rate went up from about 0.178/kwh to 0.189/kwh
But, the non-free nights plan was the same kwh rate, so a no-brainer here.

Our utility offered a plan like that years ago. We opted in, and our bill went down a little bit, for about 6 months. At the time, my wife was a stay at home mom with 3 kids, and daytime usage was pretty consistent. We tried to schedule the optional usage items (washer/dryer, dishwasher, pool filter) for the evening hours whenever possible.
Came the summer, and the AC costs made themselves known. Not much we could do about it, but suddenly, the bill went down dramatically one month. And it stayed down, month after month.
My neighbor finally figured it out. We'd had a storm-related power outage for about half a day, and the 'smart' meter the utility had installed, was 12 hrs out of sync. So we were getting the discount rate during peak hours, and vice-versa.
That lasted almost 2 years, until the meter was replaced with a smarter one.

In this day and age, that probably wouldn't work, but I like to tell that story about our utility out-smarting themselves yet again. They seem to do it over and over.

In your case, I'm very suspicious of the 4 month sampling. I'd likely stick with the standard plan, especially since it seems like you need to opt-in to keep what you already have.

Agree with getting a whole year of what your usage history is/was. And they definitely have that info. Kinda shady of them to not provide it up front.

I'd pick that one.

We have similar choices in my city, not sure if it's the whole state. A) You can pick level rate for all hours or B) pay a lower rate on off-peak hours, pay a higher rate for on-peak hours or C) pay a low rate for off-peak hours, pay still a low rate for on-peak hours, but they'll charge a surcharge on the highest on-peak hour out of every month. But our peak hours are from 4PM to 7PM weekdays only and holidays are considered off-peak. Very generous for the consumer.

So we use minimum electricity from 4 PM to 7 PM on weekdays meaning no cooking on the electric stove, no washing / drying, the six humidifiers are turned off automatically at 4 and turn on back on at 7 PM along with the thermostat. For the thermostat, I increase the heat or cool setting from 3 PM to 4 before it shuts down for the next 3 hours.

But the difference in my rates is more than 1 cent. Winter off-peak rates are 10 cents / kWh 28 cents / kWh for winter rates. For the third plan, it's 5 cents / kWH off-peak, 9 cents / kWh peak hours with $12 / KW of the highest on-peak usage hour for the month.

Yours is only a 1 cent difference or just an 8% savings over peak hour rates plus it's 12 hours out of the day. I don't really think you can shift your energy usage that much to make a difference. It's a no-brainer for me to say stay on the anytime rate plan.

From the looks of it, I'm thinking your power company wants you to stay on the anytime rate plan but they want to be able to say they offer an incentive for consumers to reduce on-peak demand usage.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
On the renewal, the rate went up from about 0.178/kwh to 0.189/kwh
But, the non-free nights plan was the same kwh rate, so a no-brainer here.

Seems high. On March 15th, I signed a 24 months fixed for 0.109/kwh. There was also a time of use 8PM to 5:59AM plan for 0.119/kwh for 36 months.

My old long-term contract from prior to the Ukraine invasion expired in late December. However, rates were much higher in December so I took a look at the natural gas futures market and saw quite a few months of declining prices. I signed a 3 month deal and it paid off.

This time, I took a look at the natural gas futures market again and saw rising prices for a little over 18 months so I locked in a 24 month contract.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tatortodd,

The only way I would change it to cheaper off peak is if I had an electric car that I could set to charge at off peak times.