Power costs more in deregulated areas, study says

TEXAS - A nonprofit coalition of municipalities says a study it conducted found that Texans who live in cities where electricity rates are still regulated pay less for power than do those who live in areas with deregulation.

The Texas Coalition of Cities for Utility Issues said its study found that people living in areas served by municipal power companies and co-operatives have the lowest electricity prices in the state.

"This report shows that Texans in many deregulated areas can shop around all they like, and still never find the deals available to ratepayers in Austin, San Antonio and elsewhere," TCCUI chairman Don Knight said in a story for the online edition of the Austin American-Statesman.

The coalition's study compared the lowest rates offered by the competitive electric providers serving North Texas as well as 22 municipally owned utilities, cooperatives and investor-owned utilities that operate outside competition. The study focused on rates from September.

Tom Stewart, a spokesman for TXU Energy, noted that some of the competitive electricity companies had dropped their prices since the survey was completed, The Dallas Morning News reported in its online edition.

Texas adopted an electric deregulation law in 1999.

Related News

us grid and climate change

The biggest problem facing the U.S. electric grid isn't demand. It's climate change

NEW YORK - The power grid in the U.S. is aging and already struggling to meet current demand. It faces a future with more people — people who drive more electric cars and heat homes with more electric furnaces.

Alice Hill says that's not even the biggest problem the country's electricity infrastructure faces.

"Everything that we've built, including the electric grid, assumed a stable climate," she says. "It looked to the extremes of the past — how high the seas got, how high the winds got, the heat."

Hill is an energy and environment expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served…

READ MORE
amazon wind power

Amazon Announces Three New Renewable Energy Projects to Support AWS Global Infrastructure

READ MORE

Australia PM rules out taxpayer funded power plants amid energy battle

READ MORE

powerlines

Hydro-Quebec begins talks for $185-billion strategy to wean the province off fossil fuels

READ MORE

gov lamont

CT leads New England charge to overhaul electricity market structure

READ MORE