At the end of last week, Oncor reported that more than 5,000 residential and commercial customers were without power due to heavy storms in east Texas. The outages were in and around the Tyler area. Oncor was quick to respond to reports of outages, sending crews to restore power to the affected customers. All in all, it was a fairly minor incident, but it serves as an important reminder to us all, in Texas and in other deregulated states: weather has a tremendous impact on business electricity, influencing the price and, at times, even the delivery of power.
Across the US we see a wide variety of weather patterns. In recent years we’ve witnessed everything from tornadoes and hurricanes to ice and snow storms. Each of these has the potential to drive the price of business electricity up or down. In February of 2010, a cluster of ice storms rolled across north east Texas. The storms brought even large metropolitan areas, like Dallas/Fort Worth, to a standstill. (In fact, the weather threatened to impact sports fans, too, as we were gearing up to host the Super Bowl that very week!) As a result of increased demand for power, the cost of commercial electricity shot up quickly. Some customers had the unpleasant experience of opening their power bills the following month to find them five and even ten times higher than normal as a result of the cost increase.
The same thing can happen during a heat wave, in the aftermath of a hurricane or when tornadoes sweep across the plains. There are times when unexpected weather leaves us with a surplus of power, allowing for a dip in the price of commercial electricity. At other times, storms and extreme weather push demand through the roof (which raises the price) and can even damage equipment, making it more difficult and more costly to deliver power. We’ve made some impressive advances in weather forecasting in the past few decades, but as you well know, the weatherman doesn’t always know what’s going to happen, and even one unexpected turn in weather patterns can have a reverberating effect on the business electricity market.
As a business owner, the take-away here is that there is a great deal of value in developing a long term strategy for your commercial electricity needs, including a fixed rate which will lock in the price of your energy and protect you from pricing spikes. There is enough unpredictability in business. Your energy bill doesn’t need to be one more thing you’re worried about.
At Live Energy, we work with business owners and companies of all sizes to help our clients find the business electricity product, rate, provider, contract and term that will give you the greatest level of price assurance. Our goal is to save you time and money by taking the guess work and hassle out of the process of selecting an energy provider. There are, frankly, a lot of factors to consider when developing your energy strategy. Why not enlist the help of an expert?
If you’d like to learn more about how Live Energy can help you stay ahead of the curve, please contact us today at (817) 810-7770. The business electricity market is just like the weather—unpredictable. Let us help you find a plan that will work for you no matter what the future holds.