Many of our customers went multiple days without electricity due to Hurricane Beryl in early August. These customers have recently received bills covering the billing period including days without electricity, and many are surprised to see that their bills were not less than the month before. When auditing our own home, we discovered we used about 25% less electricity for the same billing period as last year, which makes sense not having power for a week, but our bill was slightly more than the month before.
We used our Smart Meter Texas account to verify that the days without power indicated 0 kWh of usage and that the billing cycle range usage matched the billed amount of kWh. Smart Meter Texas is a free service and is loaded with lots of great data. Using Smart Meter Texas, you can audit your usage down to 15-minutes intervals, audit each billing cycle, and see resulting changes in usage when you alter your habits.
Smart Meter Texas shows the usage data directly from your home electricity meter. In deregulated areas of Texas, which each of you live in, your utility (Centerpoint, Oncor, TNMP or AEP) is responsible for reading the meters to determine the amount of electricity used in a billing cycle. This number is then sent to your electricity provider to prepare the bill. If you have a question about your usage, that question should be directed to your utility, not your provider. Texas Power Agents is also unable to help with specific questions about your home electricity consumption.
If you would like to create your own Smart Meter Texas account, you will need to follow a few steps for the initial setup:
Visit their website at https://www.smartmetertexas.com/home
Locate your current retail electricity provider's name and PUCT on your bill and enter this into the required field. Many suppliers use DBA's so it important to match the PUCT number.
Locate your ESI ID number from your bill (17 to 22 digit number that is unique to your residence) and enter it into the required field. For example, all Centerpoint ESI IDs begin with 1008 and all Oncor ESI IDs begin with 1044.
Locate the electric meter number (if you are a Centerpoint customer, you will not use the leading "I" in front of the meter number to create your account) and enter it into the required field.
Below please find two screenshots of usage before and after a customer was affected by Hurricane Beryl. As you can see, this customer's usage went to zero (0) on the days without power. After reviewing the Smart Meter Texas for the same dates as their billing cycle, it was confirmed their bill was prepared with the correct usage.
Texas Power Agents is not able to assist you with Smart Meter Texas setup. Please direct calls to Smart Meter Texas at 844-217-8595 if you are having difficulty creating your account.
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