Lowering a Houston electricity bill

There are two ways to lower an electricity bill: use less, or pay less for what you use. Almost everything written on the subject covers the first. The second is usually the larger number and takes an afternoon.

Start with the rate, because it costs nothing to check

Find your contract end date. If it has passed and you did not act, you are on a month-to-month default rate — typically the most expensive product your provider sells. Correcting that is a single switch, requires no change to how you live, and for many households is worth more than every efficiency measure below combined.

If your contract is current, check what type it is. A variable rate that has quietly climbed is the same problem wearing a different name.

Then the cooling, because this is Houston

Cooling is the dominant load in a Houston home for roughly nine months of the year. Everything that reduces how long the compressor runs matters more here than it would almost anywhere else.

• Raise the set point and use setbacks. A consistent few degrees warmer while the house is empty is the highest-value change available at zero cost. A programmable or smart thermostat matters mainly because it applies the schedule every day rather than when someone remembers.
• Change filters on schedule. A clogged filter makes the system work harder for the same result, for months, silently.
• Service the system annually. Low refrigerant and dirty coils both raise runtime substantially, and neither announces itself until the system struggles in July.
• Seal the duct work. Ducts running through a Houston attic lose cooled air into a space that can reach well over 130°F in summer. Leaky ducts are among the most common and most expensive faults in older local housing stock.
• Insulate the attic properly. In this climate the attic is the main heat path into the house. This is a capital measure that reliably pays back locally.
• Use ceiling fans while rooms are occupied. Fans move air across skin, which lets you hold a higher set point in comfort. They cool people, not rooms — running one in an empty room adds load and cools nothing.

Water heating, the quiet second

Water heating is usually the next largest electrical load after cooling. Lowering the tank thermostat to 120°F, insulating the first few feet of pipe, and fixing hot water leaks are all cheap and permanent. If the tank sits in a hot garage, an insulating blanket is worth the small outlay.

The things that matter less than people think

• Standby power. Real, but small. Unplugging phone chargers will not move a Houston summer bill.
• Lighting. Worth switching to LED for the longevity, but lighting is a modest share of a modern home's consumption.
• Turning the AC off when you leave for the day. In this humidity, letting the house get fully hot means the system runs long and hard to recover, and the humidity has to be pulled back out too. Setting back is better than switching off.

What cannot be lowered

CenterPoint's delivery charges are regulated and identical for every Houston household on the residential tariff. Taxes are statutory. Using less power reduces the volumetric part of delivery charges, but nothing changes the rates themselves — which is why our advice always separates the supply half of the bill from the rest.