A reliable electric company can make a difference in your home. Utility companies are regulated monopolies that are legally allowed to deliver electricity and gas to homes in their territory.
If you live in a deregulated region, your electricity can come from competitive suppliers.
Reliable Service
An electric company in Fort Worth does more than deliver electricity to homes. They also generate it, and in states with energy deregulation, they may even sell electricity directly to customers through competitive supply services. Reliable power is vital for Americans’ daily lives – it keeps life-saving medical equipment and communications systems running, homes cool in the summer, businesses operating, and more.
One of the most important things you can look for in an electricity company is its reliability rating. A high rating means you’ll likely experience less frequent outages and better customer service. It can also help you save money on your energy bills.
When comparing electricity providers, find out their ratings from independent sources. You can also ask friends and family members who use an electric supplier about their experiences.
In addition, when researching an electricity provider, check to see what kind of energy source they use. Many companies are switching to renewable and sustainable energy resources because they want to be environmentally responsible.
You can also look at an electric company’s website to see how easy it is to manage your account online. For instance, some companies let you log in to view past bills and set up automatic payment withdrawals. Other companies offer a mobile app that allows you to report outages and get information about estimated repair times.
Affordability
Affordability is a key concept for many different services. It allows us to pay for housing, medical care, and food. But it’s also important for Energy.
Affordable electricity rates are a way for consumers to save money while protecting the environment. Many providers that offer these rates prioritize renewable energy sources to cut costs and reduce their carbon footprint. Others offer time-of-use plans that lower electricity rates based on when you consume Energy. You can reduce your usage by using energy-efficient appliances, unplugging electronics when not in use, and scheduling heavy energy consumption during off-peak hours when rates are lower.
Utilities charge customers for the kilowatt-hours of electricity they consume, along with fixed charges that cover maintenance and expansion of their grids and broader electrical systems. If these fixed costs were based on income instead of per-kilowatt-hour volumetric rates, low-income households would see significantly lower bills than they do now. Middle-income households would see minimal bill impacts, and high-income households could also benefit.
Affordability also means utilities can incorporate increasingly sophisticated cost allocation mechanisms without making energy bills harder to understand and navigate. For example, incorporating time-of-use rates and demand charges could shift the amount of Energy used during critical peak times from the residential sector to other sectors like the industrial and commercial segments of the market. This will help balance supply and demand and reduce overall electricity costs.
Customer Service
A reliable electric company should offer fast and easy-to-navigate customer service. This includes an online portal to pay your bill, track usage, and more. You should also receive helpful and friendly phone support when you have questions about your account.
While many factors affect the reliability of our nation’s electricity grid, one key aspect is the ability to withstand sudden electric system disturbances. These can occur when a power plant shuts down, an interconnection fails, or a tree falls on transmission lines during a storm. These events are typically the result of a chain reaction that can cause cascading blackouts, requiring the region’s power plants to respond to meet the electricity demand quickly.
To achieve this level of reliability, the NERC-developed mandatory reliability standards must be followed by all participants, from power producers to local distribution companies. These standards are enforceable by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
To help you choose a reliable electric provider, Choose Energy has used data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to rank the best and worst utilities for keeping the lights on. To calculate our rankings, we considered the average outage duration for each utility in 2017 and the average outage frequency excluding MEDs.
Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency is a key driver of energy reliability. It reduces the need for new electricity generation and transmission infrastructure by lowering overall electricity demand, which lowers utility bills for households, raises revenue for businesses, and lowers operating costs for schools, hospitals, and public buildings. It also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, increases water efficiency, and helps diversify resource portfolios to mitigate the risk of volatility in fossil fuel prices.
It’s worth mentioning that most utility-led energy efficiency programs are pass-through costs to customers, meaning they don’t earn utilities any profits (the exception is when the company invests in repairing natural gas leaks, which saves money by cutting fuel costs). Thus, these investments are not always on a priority list for electric companies—particularly those with regulated rates and profit margins of 10% or more.
But what about investing in new, efficient equipment? In a recent discrete choice experiment, we found that households are willing to pay about $1.40 a month for three hours per month of reduced evening electricity supply interruptions. This suggests that the benefits of energy efficiency can offset the costs of adding new capacity to the system, and it shows that utilities should be deploying these resources where they can make a difference. This is especially important as they look to improve the reliability of their systems in high fire-risk areas, where we’ve seen outages double in just five years.