So a representative from http://www.justenergy.com/ knocked on my door today trying to get me to lock into a flat rate for my gas & electric. This is really the first time I ever had to deal with something like this so I decided to hear the guy out and got your typical salesmen pitch about how good having a flat rate is and blah blah blah. I didn’t commit to anything yet because I wanted to do some more research and doing a search of the company name in google got me some :tif: feedback on the company but no real good info explaining why, it was mostly dumb asses complaining. So my question is are you on flat or fixed? Is this shit really a scam or is it worth doing? He said the rates for where I am living (baldwinsville NY) are between 7 something and 12 and he could lock us in at 8.3 but because we just moved here 2 weeks ago I have yet to get a utility bill so I don’t even know what my current rate is.
A fixed rate will provide you with rate certainty, but you will pay a hefty premium for it. If you go to ECA’s website you can see the actual variable prices for both ECA and NFG. The last time the utility rate was above $8.30/Mcf or $0.83/ccf was back in March 2009. Market prices are still pretty depressed right now, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Below is a matrix of the current NYMEX prices (which is what is used to calculate a person’s gas rate) and the additional factors that go into it (basis - cost to move the gas from the Henry Hub in Louisiana to NFG’s City Gate) and a marketer’s risk premium and profit margin. I am estimating the basis based on a typical residential customer’s load.
To come up with an $8.30 price, the risk premium/profit is around $1.40/Dth @ CG or $1.47/Mcf. This equates to a premium of $153 a year - pretty damn high. Considering most marketers would only make a few dollars a year on a residential account with variable prices, you can understand why these same ESCO’s push fixed pricing as hard as they do.
I would stay on variable pricing. If you do choose to go with an ESCO for your variable pricing, look into the Energy Cooperative, which is a not for profit ESCO.
Ack, what’s been going on with ECA’s prices this year? They were consistently better than National Fuel back when I made the switch in 08 but for the first 7 months of 2010 they’ve been considerably worse than National Fuel. On the 4 months ECA was more they averaged 10.4% more while for the 3 months ECA was less they only averaged 1.3% less.
Jay - PM me your account number and email address and I’ll send you your actual savings thru June.
Below is my response concerning this from the original thread that Josh started:
The only reason there have been loses with ECNY has been due to a credit NFG has been passing thru to customers. It is due to an over-collection from the prior year and it equates to a credit of $0.13103/Ccf. This is a huge credit considering the actual market rates are only around $0.50-0.60. This credit will continue until they reset it after August 2010.
ECNY still has the lowest rates of any marketer in NFG territory. Effectively with this credit, NFG is able to provide rates below actual market costs. No supplier would be able to beat this price.
Over the summer, these losses really won’t have any effect on annual savings, since everyone’s usages are really low. I wouldn’t have quoted that the savings will go back up to 15-20% going forward since this is really unknown, but if the credit is eliminated as of September 2010, ECNY will begin to show positive savings again, just in time for next winter.
You need to be in the program for at least twelve months to realize the benefits.
Just an FYI, this year was the first year in at least four that NFG issued any sort of credit: You will see that ECNY has on average beat the utility in all of those years, which is what should happen. If the credit didn’t apply during this winter, ECNY would have beat the utilities price every month.
Below is the exact definition of the credit per NFG:
Adjustment of gas sold, pursuant to Interim Annual Surcharge
or Refund provision on General Information Leaf No. 81 of
P.S.C. No. 8 - Gas. Amount applicable during the period
February 1, 2010 through August 31, 2010 referable to gas
adjustment undercollection for the twelve months ending
August 31, 2010. (13.1030)
Thanks for the reply, I’m just going to stick with the variable rate for now. We get our gas & electric supplied by National Grid so I will just keep track of how the bill is for the next few months and go from there.
No problem. I probably should have asked what utility you were with. Grid’s rates will be slightly different than NFG (which are also posted on ECA’s website), but sticking with a variable rate is currently your best bet.
I too was wondering what was going on with ECNY… Great job explaining that. Honestly, I use pretty much zero gas during the summer, and I have gas appliances and hot water tank.
A 10-15% savings of nothing is still pretty much nothing.
I save a SHITLOAD of money with ECNY every winter over national fuel, and I have been with them for about three years now.
Why don’t they post electricity savings on the website? I’d like to see what I’m saving there. It has to be something because my highest electric bill all year was 79 dollars. This is national grid.
Sorry Jay, its because I switched. I paid too much with NFG last year and switched just in time for ECNY to get more expensive so I could miss out on the credit :tup:.
The reason why they don’t publish savings online is because the rates are dependent on a bunch of factors:
1: Service Class
2: Zone (there are 11 Pricing Zones in NY State)
3: Meter Period
4: Utility
5: Voltage Level (don’t worry about this) which affects line loss percentages
So basically, there are way too many rates to publish on any given day.
For National Grid, ECA charges the utility rate. The customer receives the full backout credit of 0.4 mils ($0.0004/kWh) plus a billing credit of $0.53/month. You also receive a tariff surcharge (aka GRT) benefit of 2%,3%, or 5% on the supply portion of your bill.
A really simple way to calculate savings for National Grid would be:
- Backout Credit = $0.0004/kWh x your annual usage
- Add $6.36, which is just (12 x $0.53 billing credit).
- GRT Savings (either 2%, 3%, or 5%) - multiply this percentage times your annual supply cost with ECA. You can find this percentage on the utility portion of the bill.
The tariff surcharge ends up being the largest savings. The savings is pretty small in comparison to natural gas, but there is at least still a benefit.
Most residential accounts save about $20/year, but this number will go up as energy costs increase.
You will more than make up for it when you fire your furnace up.