How we compute true cost

Inputs, and where they come from

Every input to an assessment is a document you can independently check.

• Your meter readings. One every 15 minutes, from Smart Meter Texas (SMT), the state-mandated system your utility reports into. Access is read-only, and you grant it yourself by tapping Confirm on SMT's own notice. We never hold a utility login. Where your meter also counts the power your home sends back to the grid, we read that too.
• Plan terms. The Electricity Facts Label (EFL) the law requires each provider to publish. Every day we load the plan lists from Power to Choose, the state's comparison site, and from each provider's official listing. We keep every version of every EFL.Then we check each one: from what we read, we work out the EFL's own prices at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) again. If they don't match, we don't price the plan. Your assessment cites the exact document it priced.
• Delivery charges. Your utility's current residential delivery rate (a fixed monthly charge plus a per-kWh charge). We read it from the utility's own tariff, its published rate book, and check it against what current EFLs print. The delivery rates are the same on every plan; a few plans with free hours or days charge no per-kWh delivery in them. We price those hours that way too.
• Your current plan. From the bill, EFL or renewal offer you upload: provider, plan, end date, early-termination terms. We measure the assessment's savings number against it, and only when we can price it.

The calculation

For each plan we work out the bill you would have received in each of your billing cycles:

In words: add up each hour's use times that hour's price, then add the base charge and delivery charges, and take off any credits earned.

• Time-of-use windows. Some plans give certain hours their own price, such as free nights. We apply those windows hour by hour to your meter readings. We honor a “free nights” plan's free hours exactly, and apply its daytime rate to your own daytime hours. That is where these plans win or lose.
• Bill credits. We check them against each month of your history. A credit that requires 1,000 kWh counts only in the months your home crossed 1,000 kWh. We never assume it every month, the way the advertised price does.
• Solar panels and electric cars. Some plans pay a credit for the power your home sends back to the grid from solar panels or a battery, or for charging an electric car in set hours. Where the EFL's prices include that credit, they assume the same amount every month for every home. That is the price Power to Choose shows.We price every plan on the power your home draws. We credit the power your meter shows you sent back, at the plan's own rate. For a car, we find its charging in your meter readings and credit what falls inside the plan's hours. A meter can't tell a car from another large load at night, so we mark that credit as an estimate. On an estimate of your usage, neither credit counts.A plan whose EFL turns away homes with solar panels or an electric car is left out of your ranking, and we show you the EFL's words.
• Base charges and minimum-usage fees. We apply them each billing cycle, including the months your usage would have set off a penalty. A minimum-usage fee is a charge for a month you use less than a set amount.
• Short-term plans (under 12 months). We never stretch one to a full year. We price each one over its real term, on the matching months of your history, and compare it with the top plan over the same months.
• Variable-price plans. Their price can change each month. We price the first month at the plan's own price, and every month after it at the provider's latest published price, its price today. We list a plan whose provider publishes no usable price history, but we don't rank it.
• Delivery charges. We add them to every plan. Taxes apply the same way to every plan, so we don't rank on them.

We rank plans by true cost. The advertised “average price at 1,000 kWh” never sets the ranking. You see your own price for each plan; where we mention the advertised one, it is to show the gap.

The five traps, and the test that catches each

• Bill-credit plans. A large credit at exactly 1,000 kWh makes a plan look unbeatable at 1,000 kWh and terrible everywhere else. Test: price only on your own monthly usage; never surface the advertised rate.
• Time-of-use mismatch. Free-nights plans assume a night-shifted home. Test: compute your share of each plan's own hour windows from your meter readings, and say so when the plan's assumption doesn't match you.
• Short plans priced as a year. A 5-month plan covering the cheap half of the year looks like the cheapest plan sold when stretched to a full year. Test: price it over its real months, and show the day you would have to shop again as a risk.
• Fee-free window timing. Providers often waive early-termination fees only in a window before the contract ends. Test: read the end date and the fee terms, and compute the fee-free window.
• Your current provider's renewal offer. The renewal a provider mails is often worse than its own new-customer plan. Test: always price every plan your current provider sells today, not only the renewal.

A worked example, line by line

One home, one plan, every step of the arithmetic. The home uses 13,190 kWh a year. The plan is fixed-rate with a usage credit: energy charge 10¢/kWh, no base charge, a $75 bill credit in any month at or above 1,000 kWh. Delivery is $4.00/month plus 7¢/kWh.

Shaded months fall below the 1,000 kWh threshold, so they lose the credit. It lands 6 of 12 months; the advertised math assumes 12 of 12. That gap is $450 a year before any rate difference.

This example is a flat-rate plan, so monthly totals suffice. For time-of-use plans, where the price depends on the hour, we do the same thing hour by hour. We put each hour of your meter readings in its free or paid window. That is why two homes with the same monthly total can get opposite assessments on the same plan.

Assumptions, stated plainly

• Your next year looks like your last. Rankings assume your coming months resemble the history we priced. When you tell us something changed (an EV, a pool, working from home), chat models it as an explicit scenario against your own hours and shows both versions. We never silently assume your life changed.
• Monthly data is a fallback. Without 15-minute readings, we estimate time-of-use plans from monthly totals and an assumed hourly pattern. They carry a plain-words note until your readings arrive.
• Prices go stale in days. We timestamp every quote and check it again against the current EFL before you enroll.

What we can't price

• Plans whose EFL we can't verify. If our reading of a document does not give back its own published prices, we list the plan as unpriced. We never guess.
• Variable plans with no published history. Listed, not ranked: without a published price history, we can't price the months after the first.
• Prepaid payment fees. We price a prepaid plan on your usage and list it, marked Prepaid. It is never one of the three plans we recommend. We quote the fees that depend on how you pay from its Prepaid Disclosure Statement. We don’t add them to the price.
• Some solar and car credits. A few plans pay a solar or car credit at a rate, or in hours, we haven't read yet. We price those plans without the credit.
• Multiple meters. We price each meter on its own readings. We never blend meters into one assessment.

Corrections

Find an arithmetic error in any assessment and we will fix it and say so here, with the date. A methodology that expects to survive audit should invite one. Please try to break it. Write to support@kilowhiz.com.