Are you tired of seeing those ugly looking electricity pylons splitting up some of the nice farm land around Texas. A great thing about Texas is the opportunity from population and job growth. One of the negatives is because of this expansion the Texas imminent domain law sometimes must be used to buy up strips of land to install electricity lines and those big ugly metal electricity pylons.

 
What if the state of Texas could offer these people something cool instead of your basic metal pole? Maybe the cool factor and beautification of having an electric pylon in the shape of a deer, bear, Texas longhorn cattle or something else would lessen the heart sinking feeling of having your farmland “uglified” with big electricity pylon poles.

Check out some of these electricity pylon ideas below. I can see how this could really spruce up the look of these ugly things. If your farmland in Texas was about to get electricity pylons installed would you opt for one of these designs or would you want the standard pole?

Energy Future Holdings is the Dallas based company that controls TXU and if you remember was the entity purchased in the largest leveraged private equity buyout in U.S. history. The Energy Future Holdings private equity buyout now ranks as the number 2 biggest ever as RJR Nabisco beat them out. The deal was a cool $44.37 billion to buy up Energy Future Holdings by buyers KKR, TPG, and Goldman Sachs.

The former secretary of the state was appointed to run this big massive company and now facing a 5th consecutive quarterly loss I start to wonder about the too big to fail concept. Is this loan guaranteed by the government in one way or another. How does this get handled if government has to step in?

I kind of doubt these companies would get into this buyout if there weren’t some pretty strong guarantees in place for this leveraged loan.
Being burdened by all this debt Fitch Ratings downgraded Energy Future Holdings’ debt to 8 levels below junk and said a default is very likely a possibility.

The company faces increasing troubles in trying to generate cash and their debt is only going up along with their interest payments. Sales fell 27% to $1.22 billion in the first quarter and interest expenses increased 22% to $785 million from a year earlier.

I wonder who has a protective stake in this buyout and what investors will end up being screwed? The report seemed to blame falling power prices on EFH’s downfall so far. I wonder if the problem has anything to do with the EPA and environmental activists that stopped all those state of the art coal power plants that were expected to be built by TXU?

Power generation is a big part of the EFH business. Their retail side, TXU, sells retail electricity service but this is a carefully balanced business that has other worries unrelated to the generation side of the business.

Trying to keep this big company going with all the government regulation and competitive deregulated market in Texas seems like a huge undertaking and add to that the pressure of all that debt.

I see this as a long uphill climb into positive territory.

Not so surprising, Energy Plus, has been named in a class action based on a press release sent out by Sanford Wittels & Heisler LLP law firm.

The lawsuit makes the same assertion we have received numerous times on our website by Energy Plus customers.

In the allegation the typical scheme is recognized as found in the federal trade practices act known as a “bait and switch scheme”

The assertion is that customers are complaining that Energy Plus promises them competitive electric rates if they switch from their current provider.

The problem is that within 1 to 2 billing cycles the rate increases by as much as 150% completely wiping out the competitive aspect to the rate.

This class action is for New Jersey electric service customers although Energy Plus offers similar advertising campaigns through Best Buy in Texas and many other states. We have also seen Energy Plus advertise through the government college loan payback incentive program Upromise. Many people on the Upromise board complain that Energy Plus has scammed them. See for yourself click here

Some customers have complained that they have lost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars a year from switching to Energy Plus based on the “competitive rate” promise.

Energy Plus currently sells retail electric service in Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

NRG Energy the parent company of Reliant Energy bought Energy Plus just a few short months ago. We wondered if the marketing tactics would change now that they were under the larger authority brand of NRG Energy but it appears things did not change that much.

I discovered a new prepaid electric company opened up in Texas today called Nations Power. This company offers a fixed kilowatt hour rate as well as a variable pay what you can plan.

Regardless if you go with a traditional electric company that gives you 30 – 45 days to pay your bill or you go with a prepaid provider where you pay in advance I would choose the fixed rate every time.

Many electric companies will not hesitate to raise your variable rate on you beyond what you were expecting.

It is true not all variable rate plans are bad but to be on the safe side a fixed electric rate with Nations Power is probably the way to go.

The reason you would want to order electric service through a prepaid electric company like Nations Power is if you know you will not be able to afford deposits by other providers.

The Texas government does offer assistance to low-income families for deposits and rate subsidies but for most of us the hassle in qualifying for these assistance programs is simply not worth it.

If your credit is okay or bad you will likely have to pay a deposit with most all the Texas electric companies.

For instance, if you call TXU and Reliant they will likely both ask for a deposit ranging from $200 – $500 depending on how bad your credit is.

Of course if you have good credit no deposit is needed. Now lets say you have called these two large electric companies, TXU and Reliant, if you go on to call Bounce, Green Mountain, and Texas Power they will likely ask for a deposit as well.

Why would all these providers ask for a deposit? They all work from a credit checking service to manage their risk. There is about a 50% customer default rate below a certain credit score number and what score this is remains a tightly held secret.

There is simply no way of working with a provider that bills you 30 days out for service in negotiating a deposit and that is why a company like Nations Power can come in handy.

By going with a prepaid electric company you avoid the deposit but will sacrifice on price. Most prepaid electric companies have higher prices than traditional electric companies that check your credit.

Nations Power is based out of Allen Texas and has recently launched their company as a Texas prepaid electric provider. You may reach them at (866) 356-6850.

If you have used this prepay electric company please give our community feedback in a review format in the comment section below.

Interesting to note, the company with the same PUCT license number is Catalyst Energy Inc. which is a PA oil and gas exploration company. The activities of Catalyst encompass the exploration, development, production, transmission and processing of oil, natural gas and liquid hydrocarbons. Since Texas relies on natural gas for the production of much of the electricity it is worth noting that Catalyst now has a stake in both the production and retail aspect of natural gas. There is often an inverse relation to the cost of producing electricity using natural gas and the actual cost of natural gas. If these two factors of natural gas price and “heat rate” are managed well there can be a big payoff in being in the production and retail side of natural gas. Most important is to not gamble to much in the process of doing both.

Like many of us we started out in apartment as a single guy or girl and maybe had a roommate or two. I remember tapping the windows and it almost felt like a thin layer of hard Reynolds wrap or sushi paper.

I knew after tapping the window that the winters and summers were going to be hard on my wallet because all that Texas air conditioning would be sucked up by the hot Texas sun right through that pathetic super thin pane.

The winters would make my window almost like an outdoor heater as the heat seemed to be blowing out my window as if it wasn’t even there. The heater and air conditioning ran continuously and nothing ever stabilized.

I lived alone in a 800ft, all electric, second floor apartment. I kept it as hot as I could stand in the summer, and as cold as I could handle in the winter. I barely used lights or air. In the spring/fall, when I didn’t use air at all, my electric bill fluctuated around $150. In the summer, it was as as high as $200. This was way too much money for me to spend on such a necessary thing. I frequently wondered what I could do that didn’t include permanent modifications to the apartment to lower my energy costs?

It turns out I simply had a few misconceptions about how to tackle my energy usage. I constantly kept my light turned off and my heating and air conditioning was set just enough to keep me alive it sometimes seemed like.

What ended up reducing my electric bill the most was buying weather stripping and placing it on the windows and doors. Adding thick curtains to the windows also had a huge influence on the reduction of my electric bill.

After making these minor adjustments my air conditioner and heater did not have to work as hard at keeping me a comfortable temperature and I was good to go from there with an energy bill that never went above $100 a month.

The way the PUCT wrote the rules regarding peak demand charges and electric usage rates set by electric utilities like Oncor Electric Delivery allows for interpretation. As currently interpreted by electric utilities most churches pay unreasonably high demand charges even when little or no energy is used at their facility. The problem according to the TEPA organization and the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission is that the rules have resulted in some unforeseen hardships on houses of worship. For instance, many churches are low load profile customers that may be above the 25% load factor rule but below 35%. Oncor already defines a low load factor customer as 40% and below. The TEPA organization or Texas Energy Professionals Association has requested that the rule by changed to make secondary voltage non-residential customers that are as much as 35% in load factor but still a low load profile customer avoid what are referred to as demand ratchets.

What is the Reason in the Current Law for Having Such High Demand Charges on Churches

The goal of the law was to make the demand charges for different load factors and the use of energy during peak demand periods a fair price for all non-residential accounts. What some believe has occurred is a harsh penalty on some places like many houses of worship who have to deal with a demand ratchet when their electric usage may peak on a Sunday but be flat to non-existent the rest of the week. The law was setup to be a one size fits all type of rule so it would spread out the penalty but in reality churches feel a huge brunt of these very high energy demand charges because of the unique characteristics of how they use energy during the week.

What is a Demand Ratchet?

A demand ratchet allows an electric utility to charge a minimum amount on your electric bill each month regardless of what you are actually using. They calculate this based on your highest peak month of the year and than take a percentage of that and charge you that as a monthly minimum. Your monthly minimum might be $300 – $500 and for some churches much more than this. Imagine paying this amount each month even during a month where you only used 900 kilowatt hours all month long! It can be shocking!

How Do you Lower the Demand Ratchet Penalty?

Many churches leave their current retail electric provider and try to find another one thinking that will fix their issue. This change in retail providers will do nothing to lower the demand ratchet problem. You may reduce the retail electric provider rate associated with the monthly kilowatt hours you use but the monthly minimum demand charge you pay will remain unaffected. In order to lower this demand ratchet amount currently you must show 11 months of historical change in your peak demand for electricity. A church many times has an annual load factor of 25 percent or lower. About 98% of churches fall under 35% for their load factor which is considered low as Oncor utility even defines 40% load factor as a low load profile. In this situation it makes sense to not penalize churches with super high minimum demand charges each month when they maintain a low load factor.

Churches are metered for demand by the electric utility in an unusual way from a churches perspective. The utility goes back historically and finds the highest kilowatts demanded in any one month. They bill a church a minimum percentage of this amount on their electric bill each month that could be in the range of a minimum fee like $300 – $500 and up. The problem is that a church is usually a fairly large facility and so it is capable of demanding quite a bit of energy all at one time if it needs to but that usually only lasts for the time of a service on Sunday on a hot summer day. If it is a hot Texas day and the AC equipment is old and outdated it might turn on and run all Sunday service long without ever cooling sufficiently. A peak demand might be reached that is extraordinarily high. So a church member donates 5 brand new high efficiency AC units so that doesn’t happen again. In the current law it does not matter what upgrades you made in efficiency. A new peak demand level has been reached and so for the next 11 month the church will have to pay $500 at minimum as their demand charge even if they use zero dollars in energy.  In order to lower the demand penalty number the church must lower that electricity KW demand number for the next 11 months and then the utility will make an adjustment lower in that demand charge.

What is Being Done to Change the Current Texas Church Energy Demand Charges?

A church that has a load factor of 25% or less is a low load factor church in the current PUCT rule but yet their is still a demand ratchet. A lot of law makers, organizations like TEPA, electric utilities, and city organizations are in agreement on changes that need to be made in the law specifically for churches because of their unique characteristics that are unlike most business uses of energy. This PUCT Substantive Rule 25.244 is attempting to dramatically change the law so that most churches will not have to deal with the huge hardship of paying an extra $300 – $500 in demand charges on their electric bill each month.

Will My Church Qualify as a Low Load Factor Church?

Many churches in the U.S. qualify as a low load factor non-residential electricity customer. Load factor is simply a way of describing how much energy was used in a time period, versus how much electricity would have been used, if the electric power had been turned on during a typical peak demand time for that customer. Many churches must work to avoid ever reaching a certain pinnacle of peak demand or that number could haunt you for the next 11 months as that is what your minimum demand charge is based off of. This long 11 month penalty is referred to as a demand ratchet.

How Do I Calculate My Churches Load Factor?

You can always contact your electric utility NOT your retail electric provider to find out what your load factor is and how they calculate it. Keep in mind if you signed up with a retail electric provider like Spark Energy, Bounce Energy, or Ambit Energy and live in Dallas you would call Oncor Electric Delivery to ask this question. If you signed up with one of these retail electric providers and live in Houston you would call Centerpoint Energy Utility.

The way Oncor and other electric utilities calculate the load factor percentage is by dividing the total kilowatt-hours consumed in a designated period such as a month by the product of the maximum demand in kilowatts and the number of hours in the month.

So let’s say we have a Texas church that uses 36,000 kWh in the month. We would divide that number by their peak demand which is 100 kW multiplied by 30 days multiplied by 24 hours in a day.

What you end up with is 36,000 kWh divided by 72,000 kWh which gives you a 50% load factor. What this means is that the church used 36,000 kWh and this was 50% of the total energy the electric utility planned to have available for this facility to use at the 100 kW demand level.

So Why Have Churches Been Cheated Out of So Much Money From Past Demand Charges?

The intended goal of the current demand ratchet rules was supposed to be a one size fits all approach but the law makers did not foresee how the special characteristics of a church would cause the law to significantly penalize a church compared to other nonresidential facilities.

You see the electric utility must plan at all occasions the likelihood that the church may need to hit that demand kW number of 100 kW. In order to offer this power guarantee to this facility they must charge a premium for this 100 kw high demand number that this church requires even though they don’t use a lot of monthly electric usage in kilowatt hours.

All electric utilities such as Oncor Electric or Centerpoint Energy must be able to meet peoples peak demand for electricity at all times or risk a blackout. When utilities structure in demand charges they can build up their infrastructure to offer this peak electric power when it is called for. This is why many churches in a city can open their doors on Sunday and turn on all their power at the same time and the city doesn’t have a resulting power outage.

The good news is that work is being done in the political arena for churches at the Public Utility Commission of Texas to make the case that churches that have a 25% and as much as a 35% or lower load factor should not have an 11 month demand ratchet in place. These demand ratchets make it harder for churches to work to lower their peak demand number because when they do make a change in the efficiency of their building they receive no reward for doing so unless they keep it low for the next 11 months.

Just as the PUCT has made changes to their energy demand penalty rules for certain agricultural businesses in Texas we believe there is a solid case for lowering energy demand penalties for Houses of Worship. The great news is that we even have the electric utilities on our side for changes to these laws for churches and they see that making these changes will not hurt their ability to provide reliable power to others on the Texas electric grid.

You can read more about the PUCT Substantive Rule 25.244 and a request from a local Texas christian organization to the PUCT …. click here for the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission’s request to the PUCT

There is a petition that has been submitted by Devvy Kidd and John Kidd that takes on Texas smart meters because of the health hazards of RF and EMF radiation that come from these devices.

Many people with elderly heart conditions, aging body tissue, and differences in body fluids compared to younger more healthy individuals feel that they are being sacrificed for the sake of technology. Even people not so frail feel scared by the potential high levels of RF radiation that is being emitted from Texas Smart Meters. Most states did little research on these radiation dangers and what research that was done was later found to be originally created by the industry that would profit from these new meters. You would think a little more thought  would have gone into it before mandating almost all Texans get one installed. Geniuses made microwaves safe before they went on store shelves and even then people had a choice to buy it or not.

For those that have been worried by the health hazards associated with Texas smart meters it has really become a mini-Fukushima for those concerned about radiation dangers. The idea that radiation from radio frequency and electromagnetic field energy is sending in daily waves of small X-Ray level radiation bodily exposure is a very frightening prospect. You can’t compare RF radiation to X-ray radiation as they are two totally different things. RF radiation is non-ionizing radiation and does not come with the cancer risks associated with X-ray radiation. There may still be dangers especially at higher dosages but lets not get ahead of ourselves and make the comparison with X-ray radiation as it just isn’t the same thing.

For those looking at this petition from the outside it seems a little much ado about nothing. We know most of us these days have microwave ovens in our houses and yet the smart meter is very small and on the outside of a home. Both of these devices emit RF radiation but there are some differences. For instance, the microwave is regulated by the FDA to allow for only a very small amount of RF radiation to come out of the device for the entire life-cycle of the microwave oven. The FDA has no regulation or criteria for how much RF radiation can be emitted from a smart meter. When looking at my Texas smart meter I could not find any shield or device preventing the release of unwanted amounts of RF radiation into the home and surrounding area.

Comparing Safety Levels of Microwave Ovens and Texas Smart Meters

So lets compare the two to start off with to see how a microwave oven’s danger compares with a Texas smart meter’s possible dangers. A microwave uses non-ionizing radiation which does not have the cancer risks associated with it as do X-rays. This radiation is however still harmful to some low degree and so there are rules about how much radiation leakage can occur in a microwaves life-cycle. Only 5 milliwatts of microwave radiation per square centimeter at approximately 2 inches from the surface of the oven is allowed by the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Doing a search on the FDA’s radioactive emitting product search database for “Smart Meters” it came back with nothing. It turns out that Smart Meters also produce the same type of non-ionizing radiation known as RF radiation. This radiation is much much safer than X-ray radiation but it is still potentially dangerous and so precautions are recommended and followed by many product manufacturers with the regulation of the FDA behind it.

The potential health impacts of smart meters. The California state legislatures asked for an independent review of the safety of smart meters to be conducted in order to have an unbiased report to look at that was an independent science based study. The California state legislatures were hearing from PG&E that there was nothing to worry about so they wanted to get confirmation on this from a clear scientific review that had no ties with PG&E or any company that would benefit by the sell of smart meter technology. California Council on Science and Technology did not go forward with an independent review but instead reproduced the same claims that the Electric Power Research Institute had made. The problem with this is that the same group PG&E used for their report (Richard Tell Associates) was in charge of producing the report for the Electric Power Research Institute as well. There was a table in the EPRI report used by the California council comparing the RF radiation doses from a smart meter, a cell phone, and a microwave oven. The issue with the table and report is that they were comparing apples and oranges.

They looked at whole body exposure from a smart meter and compared it to the dose of an ear from a cell phone. Rather than comparing the whole body dose of a cell phone and comparing that with the whole body dose from a smart meter they did it much differently with resulted in a significant skewing of results. Richard Tell Associates assumed a 100% duty cycle for the smart meter and a 1% duty cycle for a smart phone because you only uses the cell phone for less than an hour during a day on average. They never corrected for the enormous comparative difference in usage of 45 minute total cell phone exposure next to the continuous use a smart meter would be on for. They did not look at cumulative exposure which would make sense because the smart meter is usually attached to your house near a major room and running 24 x 7. So in the study they assumed 99% of the time the cell phone was not producing radiation but 100% of the time the smart meter would be which is a good assumption and correct for the most part but cumulative exposure was completely left out of the study. They did adjust the smart meter number to 50% exposure as a reasonable adjustment but even still this doesn’t come close to solving the problems with the study. When you correct the two major blunders in the study, the whole body and the cumulative aspect of it rather than a cell phone being 100 times more exposure than a smart meter a smart meter shows to be 100 times more cumulative exposure than a cell phone.

Corrected Graph Using Daniel Hirsch’s findings in the EPRI Graph

These inaccuracies were exposed by Daniel Hirsch who teaches Nuclear Policy at the University of Santa Cruz. He spoke to the California legislature and asked for them to revise the numbers based on these new findings regarding whole body exposure and cumulative exposure.

What is the Smart Meter Risk to the Public?

At the moment no one really knows what the risks could be even with these corrected findings on radiation exposure from smart meters. The health risks from RF radiation are uncertain but consider that your microwave oven also uses non-ionizing radiation just as the smart meter does. The United States Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health regulates the RF radiation of a microwave and I believe they should do so for the smart  meter. A spray on coating and shield backing may be all the retrofits that are necessary to offer the same protection you currently receive against RF radiation exposure as you get from your microwave oven. The health dangers could be found to be harmless but it could just as easily be found to be extremely severe. The main issue is that currently knowing nothing about the long term health risks of smart meter RF radiation exposure the government is conducting a very large experiment on millions of the population. A big part of this experiment is completely involuntary as most Texans don’t remember ever being asked if they are okay with  the new smart meters being installed on their homes and paying that extra $5 a month for the luxury of continuous 24 x 7 RF radiation exposure.

Like many of us I choose to still use my cell phone although I use a hands free set and keep that thing as far from my head as I can. When I live in my Tyler Texas home I had no choice on if I would use a smart meter but yet I have one permanently attached on my outside kitchen wall.

Consider that tens of millions of people have smart meters on their homes with potentially 100 times greater cumulative full body exposure from RF radiation than they get from their smart phone. In several years we may find this has led to a sharp increase in cancers but it could also mean we find that it actually produced no cancers and is perfectly safe. Regardless I am still paranoid about smart phone cancer risks and this is only a 45 minute per day exposure risk.

What do I recommend? I would like to keep my smart meter but I would like a retrofit similar to what already comes on my microwave oven. I want to be able to in case or spray on something to my smart meter that keeps RF radiation exposure to 5 milliwatts of microwave radiation per square centimeter at approximately 2 inches from the surface of the smart meter. If a cheap $30 microwave can meet those requirements I  don’t see why we can’t easily make that happen for a smart meter. A word of warning about assuming the risks are not great when it comes to non-ionizing radiation: It took years to understand that with ionizing radiation that comes from disasters like Fukashima there is a latent long term danger from cumulative long term exposure that always results in terminal cancer. We do not yet understand what these latent long term cumulative dangers are for non-ionizing radiation that come from devices like the smart meter which is an always on device. There is always a low ball estimate of risks from governments in order to get the mass public to not worry and accept new policy. If you think the smart meter experiment is a big gamble in Texas consider that China will install over 300 million smart meters by the end of 2015. If there is a cancer risk with smart meters it looks like we will all go down with it at the rapid rate these things are being installed. These risk estimates always go up over time after the public has already accepted the magic device. Go ahead and do what you need to do to protect yourself from exposure by buying an after market product that can assist with this. The good news is that a retrofit is likely very inexpensive and easy to install to block out the radiation although it may require a little sweat.

Mike Norman with the Fort Worth Star Telegram hits on the topic of if Texas deregulation is really working. I assume he places blame on deregulation as the reason for the Texas power supply failure because the title of his article states, “The Texas free market for electricity just isn’t cutting it“. Maybe he is just meaning that as good as deregulation is it can’t stop the EPA and other non-governmental organizations from halting all oil based energy production thereby raising consumer costs. Deregulation being a failure is a popular argument because any time prices go up or supply capacity is reached we hear about it from the political side that benefits the most from this view.

Is deregulation to blame for every time something bad happens in the deregulated Texas electricity market? No you can’t always blame it on deregulation but it is a piece of the puzzle so yes it is to blame sometimes. The main problem with deregulation isn’t inefficiencies building electric grid infrastructure and power production as this gets approved by the state and then shutdown by the EPA and federal government, not deregulation. Texas has broken up the generation companies and such away to allow new investors to come in and build power facilities but not many have filled this hole left open for increased competition. I think new investors have not come in because you are talking about investing in and building highly federally regulated things like coal, natural gas, and nuclear power facilities.  What new investors want to do what TXU just got shutdown by the EPA for trying to do? I see problems with how some retail providers try and use tricks to market their electric rates but regarding power supply being built out the bottleneck seems to be in government regulation still being in the mix too much.

Even if the market was regulated again under one monopoly per electric utility area you would just as easily be able to blame brownouts and blackouts on the monopoly regulated electric utilities just like deregulation gets blamed for things now. I don’t think Mike is trying to place all the blame on deregulation but he is pointing out that you will see an electric bill increase regardless of the provider you choose because of some recent failures in the Texas deregulated market. You see you very likely will find more non-negotiable ERCOT related fees on your electric bill eventually because of lack of electric supply available to meet demand but who is really to blame for this?

Mike explains that a free market should work in theory because investors are encouraged to place their money where the highest return will be received and in so doing offer just enough electricity to cover the demand as well as spikes in demand. In a perfect system the investor is rewarded a maximum profit for producing just the right amount of power with very little waste left over.

The problem Mike sees with the current deregulated market in Texas is that power plants break down or have to be shutdown to fix or maintain it resulting in loss of supply. If Murphy’s Law is in effect and a power demand spike occurs around the same time as a maintenance shutdown all of a sudden there is not enough power to go around for everyone.

These imperfections are problems that political powers bring up in order to fault the great electricity deregulation experiment of 2002. Will this blame game reverse deregulation in Texas? I really doubt that deregulation can be reversed anytime soon. There is huge public support for energy choice in Texas. Many people can show you on their electric bills how they have saved money because of deregulation simply from using our Electricity Bid website.

Is Deregulation to Blame for Lack of Sufficient Power Supply in Texas?

The problem we are faced with in regards to electric power supply in Texas for 2012 is unreliable power supply due to not enough power plants in operation. Is deregulation responsible for this lack of power?

No! In fact TXU was approved for and planning to build 11 new coal fired power plants that utilized clean burning technology and significantly reduced pollution from these plants compared to the old mothballed coal plants from the past. The prior mayor of Houston and Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, Bill White complained in 2010 that these plants were unnecessary but now they seem all too necessary. ERCOT predicts very tight power supplies this summer and this has politicians frantic but I’m sitting here wondering why we didn’t just get started on those 11 coal plants in 2010?

I think what Pat said has a lot to do with our problems…..Pat Ennis with Priority Power Management said, “”I’m not the smartest guy around, but I’d be willing to bet that… we’re not going to have any coal plants built here in Texas for a long time — between the EPA and the environmentalists, coal is kind of a no-no.”

The state of Texas has been contending with attacks from the Environmental Defense Fun and the EPA in regards to an argument that is mainly about the states CO2 emission levels. Instead of focusing their argument primarily on pollution like mercury levels and other scientifically verifiable pollutants they were able to stop 11 new coal fired power plants from being built by TXU because of a global warming argument.

Many scientists and climate scientists non-affiliated or backed by the United Nations IPCC organization disagree that global warming has a negative environmental impact or that man has anything to do with it. Over the last decade their has been a decline in average global temperatures and so to even argue CO2 levels to prevent Texas from expanding their power capacity only serves to hurt these environmental activists causes.

What Can Texans Do to Increase Power Supply?

Does anyone remember back a few years ago when TXU proposed building multiple state of the art clean burning coal power plants? These power plants would have significantly updated the power infrastructure in Texas but the plan was shutdown because of environmental nut jobs. Even though the power plants would have been state of the art cheap coal power with significant reductions in pollution compared to current coal power plants in operation the plan did not go through. The state of Texas must fight the EPA and federal government politically where it hurts and take back our state and its ability to provide power to our citizens.

Even with an unsatisfactory amount of power generation plants built in Texas we have seen a steady increase in large commercial and industrial facilities building on-site power grid infrastructure that are little mini power generators for their companies. These miniature power generators also known as distributed generation systems account for a large portion of the overall electricity consumption in Texas. During peak demand periods in the day these generators can turn on resulting in no need for the state to start rolling blackouts in residential neighborhoods.

The Texas demand curtailment program has been a huge success. Companies are paid to enroll in a program that they do not even have to participate in when and if they are asked to turn off their power for maybe only 20 – 30 minutes in the span of 1 month. The program is enrolled to it’s limits each time Texas opens it back up. What does this mean? There are likely more than enough large commercial and industrial facilities that would jump at the chance to shutdown production for a short interval in exchange for being paid by the state of Texas to do so. Consider that many large companies like this shutdown once a month anyway to test their back up generators so why not get paid to do this?

Solar generation at this time is not a good option for solving the states problems but has limited uses.  As we have seen, large federally backed companies like Solyndra have not even been able to stay a float because of the expense it costs to produce cheap affordable power using solar. Hey I am a fan of solar but like most people I can’t afford to build a solar off the grid system on my home or business. If I can’t afford the system like most of us why would you think the federal government can? We are at record breaking tax deficits in the beginning stages of an economic collapse and those tax dollars are to be used for things that are considered affordable and have at least a 10 year return on investment. Wind power is a partial option but is only viable to use in combination with natural gas power generation as it can share in the control systems and connections to the grid.

The smart meters, and energy efficiency programs utilities across the state offer continue to assist in teaching home owners how to make their homes more efficient and lower their monthly energy bill. These programs should continue to be encouraged and promoted through local electric utilities that control the power infrastructure.

I just found another MLM energy company today called Momentis. I clicked on the link and the person who signed up for this opportunity must have already quit because the link was invalid.

This company is powered by an electric company that has been around for awhile now called, Just Energy.

I have talked to commercial businesses about Just Energy in the past and from my knowledge they have been very aggressive. They had feet on the street sales guys canvasing business districts offering their rates.

This practice is typical of even TXU and Reliant Energy so there is nothing wrong with this I just say this to explain Just Energy has and will try anything to be competitive hence why they are in MLM.

Momentis is an MLM company powered by Just Energy and they don’t just sell electric service but also natural gas, TV, internet, and phone.

If you are wondering about this opportunity and how it compares to the rest I have news for you. As far as I am concerned I already kind of know what the compensation plan will look like before even looking.

It has become increasingly predictable what these companies compensation plans look like. The main thing I would worry about is if the company will allow you to keep whatever ranking you achieve when they eventually change their compensation plan or add more positions.

Think about this, most of these MLM energy companies adjust their plans by adding a new rank in the mix. This dilutes your stake in the money pool and continuously makes it harder for you to remain at the top.

Some MLM companies will vet you and keep you in whatever position you achieve and will not allow a new rank to push you down but will in fact promote you to that new level that did not exist when you first joined.

What companies look out for you in this way? Not many.

Regarding the compensation plan it appears it looks similar to many, such as Ignite Energy, The Green Mountain Energy MLM, and a few others. You basically get very little compensation for actually signing up electric service customers directly.

You get bonuses for signing up customers within 30 day time slots. For each 5 additional customers you get in 30 days it appears they pay you $100. That means you are getting $20 a customer one time. You also get $1 a month for each active customer you personally maintain that you have signed up directly.

Overall the compensation you get for the direct work you put into getting active customers is very little compared to other MLM companies I know about.

The real money comes in by building large active down-lines of representatives that are selling the opportunity. The reason this is where the good money comes in is because large bonuses are paid out when new recruits join.

The site does not go into how much the Myteam bonuses are or how much the myLeadership bonuses are which is curious to me but I suspect they are fairly big in the $100 – $300 range.

Keep in mind to get these bonuses your recruit has to pay a large upfront membership fee and sign up 2 customers in 30 days. Once this happens you get the initial $100 mentor bonus. The additional bonuses are paid out as your recruits qualify for more levels and are trained.

This compensation plan is very similar to many others. The hard part is in building a down-line that is very active. This is very hard to do but can be done. I produced a video that explains what the long term goal should be with anyone considering joining an MLM company. For most of us including myself it is far beyond something I would want to get involved in.

Based on TXU’s parent company report from Energy Future Holdings the energy division known as TXU Energy lost 8 percent of their customers during 2011. I have to assume the reason TXU is losing so many customers has to do with how competitive the retail electricity markets have been in 2011.

There are many retail electric companies that actively send people on the street knocking on doors at homes and businesses offering incentives to sign up with their electric company.

TXU Energy and Reliant Energy feet on the street crews have been seen in each others backyards offering offers to switch away from the other service to theirs but even still when 10 other providers are doing the same thing and offering even cheaper prices it is hard for customers to stay loyal to such an old trusted brand name like TXU Energy.

I look back at some of the ad campaigns I have seen from TXU and I must admit they seem smart such as when they tried to differentiate themselves as the company with only fixed rates that do not change.

I remember seeing ads that made it clear that a customer can find price predictability and assurance that their rate won’t change when on TXU. The safety of a locked in secure rate that will not fluctuate sounds great to me and a good way to set yourself a part from the competition but it seems to have not had the desired effect.

An 8 percent drop in customers is significant for a company like TXU that has over 1 million retail electricity customers.

Even with a loyalty rewards program that offers customers prepaid VISA gift cards ranging from $50 – $150 customers still were leaving TXU.

The assumption is that when the economy gets hard people start to look at the bottom line numbers and the simple quick solutions.

Customers may not make the most rational decisions in a quick fix and so rather than wait for a year to get a customer rewards VISA card many want that immediate cheap bill.

With so many competing electric companies offering an immediate lower electric rate compared to TXU many customers simply choose to compare and switch away at whatever rate they deem to be the cheapest.

The negative to the customer is that if they pick a short term variable rate with a different electric company they compare against TXU it will likely go up on them even higher than what they paid with TXU.

The reason the price increases is because a variable price is usually only locked in for 1 month and than goes up.

If customers do decide to switch away from TXU it is important that they compare their fixed TXU rate with other fixed rates provided by competing electric companies.

By comparing fixed rates with fixed you will end up saving money over TXU and will not end up on a quick savings offer that saves you money for only 1 month.