Texas Power

For the second straight week, falling natural gas prices are prompting Texas electric companies to lower their retail electric rates, as competition is forcing energy suppliers to match their competitors' price cuts. It continues to be a good time to buy. It's getting more difficult as energy providers have built up a backlog of customer requests.

Texans are paying the highest electricity bills they have ever paid, and the worst may be yet to come with hotter August temperatures right around the corner. Although energy prices have eased slightly, oil is still above $128 per barrel. Natural gas hit a three-month low last week, but is still hovering around $10.50 per million British thermal unit, nearly double the price last year. In other words, any relief from energy prices isn't going to come quickly.

Texas businesses with fixed-price electricity deals expiring soon should not procrastinate renewing or finding a new energy supplier before their term price expires. To do so could expose businesses to wildly volatile electricity prices, the most expensive in the market. The reason is that many electric companies have fixed-priced contracts which automatically renew.

Electric companies say that most Texans switch their energy supplier in the third quarter of the year, after they receive their first summer bill for usage during June -- when air conditioning load and higher summer power prices give homeowners a heftier bill. With consumers being hit on all sides from record gasoline prices to rising food prices, homeowners can’t afford to wait until receiving that first high summer bill to seek out savings in the electric market.