The May electric bill came on a Tuesday, and I very nearly filed it without opening it. We'd had a busy few weeks. Josh graduated at the end of April, we drove down to Cincinnati twice, and the house had been full of laundry and leftover sheet cake. When I finally sat down with the bill, one number jumped off the page. The generation line said 12.4 cents per kilowatt-hour.
We had been paying 8.9.
What happened
Last May, I used the state's Apples to Apples chart and signed us up for a 12-month fixed rate at 8.9 cents. I was proud of that. I wrote the end month on the first page of the green notebook so I'd remember. Then I didn't look at the first page of the green notebook for a year.
When a fixed contract ends in Ohio, the supplier has to send you a notice ahead of time explaining what happens next. Ours did. I found it later, in the stack of mail on the desk downstairs, dated in March. It said that unless I chose otherwise, our service would continue on a month-to-month variable rate. It didn't say what that rate would be in May, only how it would be set.
I had seen the envelope. I thought it was an advertisement. That one is on me.
So when the contract ended with the April meter read, we rolled onto the variable rate, and the variable rate for our first month was 12.4 cents. That's not only higher than our old contract. It's higher than our utility's own price to compare at the time, which was about 10.9 cents. We were paying more than if I'd never shopped at all.
What it cost us
Our May bill covered 652 kilowatt-hours, a mild month with no AC to speak of. The difference between 12.4 and 8.9 cents is 3.5 cents.
652 times $0.035 is $22.82.
That isn't a disaster. But June and July are coming, and last July we used almost 1,600 kilowatt-hours. At 3.5 cents extra, a summer month like that would have cost about $56 more. Three months of summer at that rate would have been $150 or so, and I'd have been the one who signed us up for it in the first place.
Shopping again in an afternoon
I did the same thing I did a year ago, just faster. I pulled up the Apples to Apples chart, chose our utility's area and sorted through the electric offers. I kept the same three rules:
- Fixed rate only, no variable or introductory pricing.
- No monthly fee.
- A reasonable early termination fee, $50 or less.
Rates are a bit higher across the board than last year. The best 12-month fixed offer I was comfortable with was 9.4 cents, no monthly fee, $25 to cancel. There were a couple of 24-month offers at 9.6 and 9.7, and I thought about them for a while. In the end I stayed with 12 months. I'd rather look again next spring than guess two years out.
I also checked whether the city's aggregation program was something we could join instead. The rate they offered was close, but enrollment for households switching in from a supplier ran on a schedule that wouldn't have started until fall. The 9.4 cents could start with the next meter read.
I signed up on a Wednesday afternoon. The confirmation letter from our utility came the following Monday. The new rate should start with the June read, so we'll likely have one more partial month at the variable rate. I'll live.
What I'm doing differently
A note in the front of a notebook is not a reminder. It's a hope. So this time:
I put an alert on my phone for March 1 next year, with the words "ELECTRIC CONTRACT ENDS IN MAY" in capitals. Emily showed me how to make it repeat every year.
I added a column in the spreadsheet she set up for us called "rate on bill," and every month I write down the cents per kilowatt-hour actually charged. If it changes, I'll see it the day the bill comes.
I opened every envelope from both suppliers, electric and gas, that I'd set aside as junk. Our gas contract ends in September, and I'd like to be ahead of that one.
Greg's take was simple. "So it was the letter." Yes, Greg. It was the letter.
If you've switched suppliers, look at your bill this month and find the rate on the generation line. If it's not the number you signed up for, you're not alone, and fixing it takes an afternoon.
