Texas Power Utility Consumer Rights

Summary:

Since the Texas power utility market has deregulated there's been a choice of providers which contribute to and also rebrand electricity from utility companies such as Oncor (or PUC). This has led to an array of confusion, scheming, and misleading of the public of electricity pricing, quoting, and consumer agreements. Each consumer should have the ability receive and utilize a single flat price, rate, or rate per tier for any makeup or structure for how power is delivered. Pricing plans are often unnecessarily confusing and generally have no consistency, or standard between providers. Each consumer/dwelling owner should have the right to choose or generate their own power (without risk of potential penalty) and also chose their own provider regardless of location in Texas (ideally per state regulatory agency).

It's far overdue to correct and enable fairness in how power utility is branded and sold/purchased today in the State of Texas, if not for the simple reason of necessity to have power. This petition targets 4 goals for enablement of consumer rights within Texas Power Utilities

Four Main Tenets of the Petition:

1. Simple Flat Rate Pricing - Ensure every utility provider in the State of Texas offers one single unified rate per kilowatt and/or any monthly recurring charge (and rate) and any non-recurring charge is consistent for fixed, variable, and or market based pricing both at point of sale, quoting, agreement, delivery, and billing. Consumers should have clear/visible ability to see a singular and/or flat rate of charge per kilowatt no matter the makeup of creation & delivery.

2. Competitive for all Markets/Locations - Ensure specific geographical markets in Texas are not isolated to a single public utility. Each Power Utility should have complete interoperability (regardless of boundary), with ability of resellers to sell power in any Texas market, to any consumer. Consumers should have the right to purchase from any licensed provider residing in the state regardless of geographical location in Texas. This should also apply to consumers that live in rental properties. Pricing per quantity consumed should be clearly indicated with a flat rate per tier, or flat rate of any tier. Schemes that charge, and/or discount based on a tier of consumption reached or breached negates the ability to have flat per rate pricing

3. Unimpeded Alternative Energy & Any Energy Provider - Ensure unimpeded ability for any consumer to generate their own alternative source of power, as long as the consumer owns the property and/or dwelling, so long as it doesn't represent a risk of safety to others, regardless of geographic location, market, city, and especially regardless of any homeowners association. All consumers should have the right to interconnect alternative energy with any utility company territory, and power utility provider, including the use of smart metering.

4. Only Pay for Exact Use - Ensure consumers are only charged for what power is consumed, either through utilization of smart metering, or any accurate means (visual checks). Price of power should never be based on historical usage estimates which is an unfair pricing scheme. This should not affect average pricing agreements. Consumers should only have to pay for exact use of power on a recurring basis (i.e. MRC), or a strict average of a year should be used to construe average billing.