Texans cut home power use to unsafe levels, report says
Buy food or pay the electric bill? Public fears next grid failure
More people in Texas kept their homes at a temperature that felt unsafe or unhealthy in the last year than folks in any other state in the country, according to a report based on U.S. Census Bureau data.
The report, from online home improvement marketplace HomeAdvisor, found that 26.3 percent of Texans kept their homes at uncomfortable temperatures at least once in the past year, compared with the national average of 18 percent. At the same time, almost 28 percent of Texans reported being unable to pay their energy bill at least once in the past 12 months compared with 20.1 percent of ratepayers nationwide.
HomeAdvisor analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
The study also found the rate of Texans forgoing necessary expenses — like food or medicine — to pay an energy bill was second only to the rate of those living in Mississippi. About 37.7 percent of the Texas respondents said they skipped other necessities to keep the lights on, while about 28.2 percent of all respondents said the same.
Much of those discrepancies can likely be chalked up to the winter freeze and subsequent blackouts of last February. Singledigit temperatures across much of the state knocked power generators offline and thrust millions into frigid darkness. Electricity bills soared for most Texans and for those with retail electric plans with prices that floated with the market, they ran into the thousands.
“The winter storm aside, I think the climate in Texas has a pretty broad range between low to high temperatures than most
people realize,” said Christian Worstell, the study’s author and a senior writer with HelpAdvisor.com. “Combine that fluctuating climate with the fluctuations of the deregulated power market, it’s easy to understand how over a third of the people there find themselves in a situation where they have to cut back to pay for power.”
Higher energy costs during the rest of the year likely also contributed to the high numbers in Texas, Worstell said. Ratepayers in the CenterPoint Energy service area, which serves most of the Houston region, paid nearly 15 cents per kilowatt hour if they used about 500 kilowatt hours a month in September 2021, according to the Public Utility Commission of Texas, compared with 12.7 cents per kilowatt hour a year earlier.
Natural gas prices rose by about 38 percent in 2021, according to the Energy Department, and the EIA estimates that they could rise by 30 percent this winter. Texas has the most natural gas-fired generation capacity of any state according to the EIA, with about 43 percent of the state’s power in 2021 fueled by the source.
Worstell said that will likely lead to an increase in the percentage of folks who have a hard time paying their electricity bills.
“We’re probably looking at higher rates throughout 2022, and that’s going to apply to the cold winter months as much as the hot summer months,” he said. “So even when winter passes, you might get a little relief from it in the spring in Houston, but by the time it’s June, July or August — you’re going to be wanting or needing to turn up that AC.”