Who has the cheapest electricity rates in Texas?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a profound effect on energy prices across the globe, but there have been other factors at play when it comes to electricity demand in the United States.

Take Texas, for example, where this weekend were pushing towards record highs, around 15-20 degrees higher than the average at this time of year. “A warming trend will push temperatures well above normal with some highs around 100 degrees possible,” the National Weather Service reported. What this does, clearly, is up the demand on air conditioning which can potentially overload electric lines, with the risk that it leads to a power outage as safety circuit breakers are triggered.

That concern aside, the whole picture for the summer months sees families in search for the cheapest prices around.

At the time of writing, the average retail price for residential electricity in Texas is $0.12 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Comparison sites however can give you an edge and ensure you have some extra money in your pocket after shopping around. As Compare Power states, ‘picking the wrong energy plan without knowing your home’s energy usage can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars. Compare energy plans and electricity rates with your home’s electricity usage profile to find your best rate in Texas.’

The website carries a regularly updated list of rates to meet your specific usage needs, as well as explaining the different terms and plans that may suit you best. Just enter your zip code and see how to save.

Electricity needed, US takes steps to cover hydro

U.S. officials on Tuesday announced unprecedented measures to boost water levels at Lake Powell, an artificial reservoir on the Colorado River that is so low as to endanger the production of hydroelectric power for seven Western states. Amid a sustained drought exacerbated by climate change, the Bureau of Reclamation will release an additional 500,000 acre-feet (616.7 million cubic meters) of water this year from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir upstream on the Wyoming-Utah border that will flow into Lake Powell. Another 480,000 acre-feet that otherwise would have been released downstream will be retained in the artificial lake on the Utah-Arizona border, officials said.

“We have never taken this step before in the Colorado River Basin, but the conditions we see today and the potential risk we see on the horizon demand that we take prompt action,” Tanya Trujillo, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, told reporters. One acre-foot, or 326,000 gallons (1.48 million liters), is enough water to supply one or two households for a year.

The additional 980,000 acre-feet in Lake Powell, formed when the Colorado River was dammed in northern Arizona in the 1960s, will help keep the Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric production online, raising the reservoir’s record low surface by 16 feet (4.88 meters), the bureau said.

If Lake Powell, the second largest U.S. reservoir, were to drop another 32 feet, the 1,320-megawatt plant would be unable to generate electricity for millions of people in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska. The western United States has experienced the driest period on record over the past two decades. Some experts say the term drought is inadequate because it suggests conditions will return to normal.

“We are never going to see these reservoirs filled again in our lifetime,” said Denielle Perry, a professor at Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability.

The new measures will put more stress on Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, which is downstream from Lake Powell and also at a record low. Lake Mead, formed by Hoover Dam in the 1930s and crucial to the water supply of 25 million people, has fallen so low that a barrel containing human remains, believed to date to the 1980s, was found in the receding shoreline on Sunday.