Southern California Edison customers: Save substantial $ on bill by switching rate plan

Barely anyone knows about this. It was (likely purposely) buried in a long junk mail notice they sent out to customers.

You can save substantial money on your electric bill, with virtually no downside, by simply switching your type of rate plan.

First off, you need to be a Southern California Edison customer. If you're not, ignore this post.

Start by going to this URL: http://sce.com/bestrate

Enter your account number (you'll find it on your bill), and your ZIP code.

You will then be shown a table of your past 12 months' worth of bills. There will be about 7 different columns. The first column will be your existing rate plan, and the amount your bill was each month. The next columns will be the other plans you can switch to.

Scroll to the bottom and you will see the average savings for each plan, based upon your last 12 months of usage.

For example, I found that one of the plans would have saved me 23% had I been on it. My current plan -- the standard domestic one -- was the worst one.

You then click on the link at the bottom of the table of the column of the plan you want to switch to.

Obviously I switched to the one with the 23% savings.

It will take up to 2 months to take effect, which is kinda bullshit, but I'm glad I found it, especially with summer coming up.

What are these plans?

Southern California Edison is allowing you to switch to "Time of Use" plans, where you pay above normal rates for peak time electricity usage, but below normal off-peak. Since I stay up late at night, that's probably some of the reason I am going to save around 23% by switching to one of their Time of Use plans.

Anyway, there's just about no downside to this, aside from the small potential to screw yourself if you abruptly change usage patterns. But I think that a 12-month sample is pretty good to determine what plan is best for you, and that link I posted helps you pick the best one.

NSFW

 

I don't understand the response, Blake.

Do you not believe this is helpful information for people with Southern California Edison?

whew! lucky me!



first my kid outgrew Toys R Us before Druff toilet papered them into bankruptcy...

and now I moved into DWP area before Druff targeted So Cal Ed for rate busting caused bankruptcy



beware the Druff, who pinches pennies so hard Lincoln has tears in his eyes

tight life reading long junk mail messages todd

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GrenadaRoger

whew! lucky me!



first my kid outgrew Toys R Us before Druff toilet papered them into bankruptcy...

and now I moved into DWP area before Druff targeted So Cal Ed for rate busting caused bankruptcy



beware the Druff, who pinches pennies so hard Lincoln has tears in his eyes

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Seriously, dude! The economic crime here is that customers aren't automatically put on the best savings plan and then face the choice to switch to a more expensive one. It's like the old days at the landline long distance biz where the default plan with your local tel defaulted to the most expensive long distance plan so that the compmay could gouge the uninformed customers. Fuck that shit and let the bankrupcty proceedings ensue!

So what's the upside for utility co. here? Sounds like they will be losing money on this deal. Govt has to be involved here. Electricity is just free electrons. They don't care what time of day it is.

Sounds like a good deal for the customers but I would be curious to what was going on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by herbertstemple

So what's the upside for utility co. here? Sounds like they will be losing money on this deal. Govt has to be involved here. Electricity is just free electrons. They don't care what time of day it is.

Sounds like a good deal for the customers but I would be curious to what was going on.

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Actually they do care what time it is. That's why they ask people to run their appliances at nighttime during heat waves, so the A/C units running won't put as much of a strain on the power grid.

Ideally, the electric company would like usage to be uniform throughout the day, thus never bumping up against their capacity.

But regarding your question about the upside, I believe they had to add these Time of Use rate as a form of compromise with the government, in exchange for being able to add a "Super High Use" tier, where they get to charge even more per kilowatt hour for high-volume residential users. Keep in mind that you don't have to be a huge electricity pig to reach this tier. Most medium and large single family houses will reach it at various points during the year.

They were also required to inform consumers that they could choose these rates, so of course they buried it in junk mail, hoping most would miss it.

If you live in Illinois or Texas (there may be a couple other states, I forget), you can bonus whore by switching to NRG. There's an ongoing Southwest promo where you get 10,000 points for switching. You just have to switch and keep it for 3 months. Because there's no contract, you can switch back after 3 months with no penalty. When I switched to NRG I didn't notice a difference in my electric bill. If there was, it was a few dollars at most. Then after you switch back you can do it all over again after some time passes. They say you have to wait 2 years, but I know I've done it after like 15 months and had it work. I've done it 3 times now.

10,000 Southwest points is worth about $170. Caesars sent me the same promo where I'd get 10,000 RCs, but I'd much rather have 10k Southwest points than 10k RCs (which I value at less than a penny/pt).