City council chambers where the Jan. 16 electric utility board meeting took place. Photo by Reece Nations.
By Reece Nations
Customers of Lubbock Power & Light are running out of time to choose an electric utility provider before the retail shopping period elapses.
On Feb. 15, customers’ shopping window and ability to personally choose their electrical provider will end. Customers who have not selected a provider within the allotted shopping period, which began on Jan. 5, will be randomly assigned a “default” electric provider — either Octopus Energy, Reliant Energy or TXU Energy — according to LP&L.
The Hub@TTU previously reported the city’s remaining electric utility customers would be switched over to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid over the course of a multi-day “cutover event” in mid-December. After Lubbock’s transition to a competitive retail electric market wraps up on March 4, it will complete a process LP&L first began in Sept. 2015 when the electric municipal utility first announced its intent to switch grids.
“Our hope is by February 15 when the shopping window closes that everybody’s going to have a really good feel for [the competitive market] and one-hundred percent of our people will have made choices,” Joel Ivey, LP&L chief administrative officer, said at an electric utility board meeting on Jan 16. “That’s our goal.”
LP&L’s McCullough substation on Elgin St. Photo by Reece Nations.
Lubbockities will have three more opportunities at the time of this publishing to participate in a retail electric utility shopping fair and engage firsthand with prospective providers. The fairs will take place on Jan. 22, Jan, 23 and Feb. 5, at the Lubbock Civic Center located at 1501 Mac Davis Ln. The remaining fairs scheduled in January will both run from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., while the sole February fair will happen from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
LP&L Chief Customer Officer Clint Gardner said at the meeting that these last few shopping fairs at the civic center will take place in a larger space than the first few electric shopping events. Gardner noted that the first two electric retail providers fair split space in the civic center with the Silver Spur Trade Shows Lubbock Gun & Blade show that was happening at the same time.
Additionally, Gardner said at the meeting that roughly 1,500 new customers were being added to the grid daily. So far, nearly 12,000 new customers to the competitive electric market have been signed up by representatives at the fairs, and 26 of the 50 possible providers to choose from were selected by customers.
“Everything’s working good,” Gardner said of the process. “We’re getting lots of calls about it. We’re asking questions, we’re answering questions, and that’s what we want to do.”
LP&L Public Affairs & Government Relations Manager Matt Rose said at the meeting that more events could happen depending on how many customer sign up online and how many sign up the last few shopping fair events. Rose went on to share with the board confusion some customers had over LP&L delivery rates in the new market.
LP&L’s projected summer rate beginning in May would have hovered around 16.7¢ per kilowatt hour, Rose said at the meeting. Currently, the most inexpensive plans available to Lubbock customers start at around 13.6¢ per kilowatt hour.
Rose said in an interview with KCBD that an additional delivery charge from LP&L of 6.442¢ per kilowatt hour, including a “transition charge” of one additional cent for the next two years, will apply to any plan customers choose. After this time, Rose said, the delivery charge costs will be reduced to its usual rate of roughly 5.4¢ per kilowatt hour.
“We understand right now that customers are comparing their winter rate to what their prospective rate is going forward,” Rose said. “And we just need to make sure we drill down and explain to them that it’s not a fifty or sixty-percent increase, it’s pretty even to where we would have been.”
Average monthly electrical consumption in Lubbock between 2020 and 2022. Courtesy of LP&L website.
About 10% of the municipal corporation’s roughly 108,000 customers have made the switch to the a new electrical provider, Rose said at the meeting. Meanwhile, LP&L’s dormant power plants will remain unused as the company seeks out potential buyers to take over the electrical generation units.
Prospective customers can visit powertochoose.org for a full list of electrical providers in their area as well as more information about company’s services and terms of agreement.
This is a developing story. Check back for more from The Hub@TTU.
About Reece Nations
