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Floating Electricity Rates in Alberta Can Be Attractive

· · Leave a Comment Consumer Info, Electricity, Uncategorized

When it comes to choosing the rate to pay for your electricity in Alberta these days floating rates can be attractive.  They can be really attractive if you are a customer on the RRO (Regulated Rate Option) with EPCOR.

For October usage EPCOR customers living in the city Edmonton were paying 8.737 cents/kWh for their power.   FortisAlberta customers in the Edmonton Region were paying 8.493 cents/kWh for their power.  Park Power customers paying the Floating Rate will pay close to half that for their October usage.  Depending on when their meter gets read most customers on the Floating Rate will pay between 3 and 4 cents/kWh for their electricity usage.

Here is an example of the savings that could have been had for an average residential user of 1000 kWh/month.  For demonstration purposes let’s average out the floating rate at 4.0 cents/kWh.

RRO usage charges – 1000 kWh x $0.08493 =$84.93

Park Power charges – 1000 kWh x $0.040 = $40.00

That is a savings of close to $50 if the customer had chosen Park Power’s Floating Rate over EPCOR’s RRO rate.

So, floating rates for your power can be very attractive because the savings can be very pronounced for some months.  Although the electricity market is volatile and large price spikes have occurred in the past.  If you are willing to handle the ups and downs on your power bill you can certainly beat the RRO average price and maybe even the Fixed Rates.  The choice is up to you.

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Enmax Outsourcing Jobs to India

· · Leave a Comment Consumer Info, Electricity, Interesting

Enmax is outsourcing 38 jobs to a company based in India.  The jobs are related to billing and customer care operations.

Amanda Stephenson of the Calgary Herald reported on the story last week.  Why would a Calgary owned energy retailer choose to take jobs away from our province?  Who knows but it is not the first instance of the big utilities taking jobs out of the Alberta economy.

Silently, over the last few years a number of companies have moved utility related jobs out of Alberta.  Our province has lost hundreds of jobs: Direct Energy alone, as an example, had a couple hundred employees here in Alberta when they first entered Alberta’s energy market and purchased ATCO’s retail business. They entered into a 10 year contract with ATCO for billing and customer care, but slowly moved marketing, management and finally customer care and bill payment processing jobs out of the province.   When the 10 year contract finally ended they moved the last of the bill processing jobs offshore and contracted with HCL in India.  Over the last number of years ATCO iTek likewise moved their customer care jobs to Cebu in the Philippines and a month or so ago ATCO sold their IT (iTek) division to Wipro also located in India.  The trend started a number of years ago, when Just Energy purchased the competitive commercial retail customer list from EPCOR: they as well moved the jobs out of the province.

The loss of jobs at ENMAX is just another chapter in a continuing saga.

ENMAX:                  Technology support moved to India

EPCOR:                   Sold their competitive retail list to Just Energy

Just Energy:            Now has its call center is located in North Carolina

Direct Energy:         Billing was contracted to HCL of India

ATCO-iTek:              Recently sold to Wipro of India.

 

Park Power is proud to be Alberta based and 100% of the IT, billing, customer care services are managed here in the province.  We believe in this province and all of the potential it has.

 

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Wholesale Power Prices from 2001-2014

· · Leave a Comment Consumer Info, Electricity, Interesting

This chart shows the historical annual averages of wholesale Alberta Power Prices from 2001-2014. As you can see the competitive, de-regulated electricity market is working at bringing lower prices to consumers. In particular prices for 2014 are beating the historical average.

What you should also see is the volatility that exists in the power market. If you are with EPCOR and paying the RRO Rate (8.493 cents/kWh for Oct 2014) or on a Floating Rate with a competitive retailer then you are exposed to that volatility.

If you would like protect you or your business from that exposure then you should sign up to one of Park Power’s Stable Rate Plans with rates as low as 7.50 cents/kWh.

Signing up with Park Power is easy and will allow you to:
– Guarantee a low rate for your power until the end of 2017
– Support a Local community minded business
– No Cancellation Penalties
– Lose the hassle of receiving paper bills in the mail.

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Premier Prentice uninformed about the Alberta electricity market.

· · Leave a Comment Consumer Info, Electricity, Interesting

Premier Prentice is uninformed about the Alberta electricity market.

Recently, two articles were printed about Alberta politicians making misguiding statements regarding the electricity market.

Darci Henton of the Calgary Herald reported “Prentice vow to rein in high power prices”

Matt Dykstra of the Sun Media reported “Alberta Premier wants a ‘look-see’ into electricity prices”

Both of these articles continue to prove that our elected officials are ignorant to the facts as they spread the mis-information that deregulation in the electricity market has been bad for consumers.

Here is a reality check that these headlines are out of date.

-The YTD wholesale power rates in 2014 are running at $54.59 / MW which is the fourth lowest year in the history of Alberta’s deregulated market.  In 2014, the market has benefited by prices dropping.  With the addition of new wind generation, the new Sheppard plant about to come on line and the Montana Tie Line – all of these business initiatives, (financed by the private sector) will result in lower wholesale costs.

–  Consumers today can buy electricity from Park Power for 7.75 cents / kWh and have been able to do so, all last year – even when wholesale pool prices spiked our retail offering remained constant.   A spike in Wholesale Prices – does not necessarily mean that it will impact the price consumers pay for electricity. MLAs are mixing apples and oranges and sometimes they do not know what they are talking about.

-We are offering “Special Guaranteed Rates” for our seniors in Alberta at 7.50 cents / kWh.  If you are over 60 why not sign up and save some money?

– During September, Park Power consumers on the “Floating Rate” paid as low as 3.7 cents per kWh which was as low as the rate was in February 2002.  Yes, similar to the cost of energy 12 years ago.  This headline story broke in the media – exactly at the same time as we were sending out invoices to customers for the low price of 3.7 cents per kWh.

-3 Year-Guaranteed stable rates are available for residential,  commercial, and non-profit customers – PLUS – NO EXIT fees; consumers can exit the contract with just 10 day-notice with zero penalties.

-Bluntly & Simply: by switching over to one of Alberta’s competitive and independent retailers consumers in Alberta will save money.

-If you are paying 8 or 9 cents for electricity – then you are paying too much.  If you are tired of the RRO going up and down – then get off of the old utility rates and switch over to one of Alberta’s independent retailers.

Deregulation Promised “Lower Rates” and it offered the option of “Customer Choice” for consumers and we delivered.  Check it out parkpower.ca Stable rates guaranteed to the end of 2017.

Wake up Folks !  You got what you asked for – “Lower Rates”,  “Guaranteed Prices” and “No Exit Fees”.

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Energy Savings At Home

· · Leave a Comment Community Building, Consumer Info, Electricity, Interesting

Energy savings at home is something we should all aim to achieve.

If we are efficient and smart with out energy use at home it will have two positive effects.  Firstly, it will reduce our energy consumption which will help reduce our monthly utility bills.  Secondly, it will have a positive environmental effect because less demand on the electricity grid  means less coal burned to service that electricity demand.  Less coal burned means less pollution in our air.

If you are a Park Power customer then luckily you are paying lower rates for your electricity than customers of the big corporate energy retailers, but you can save even more money by reducing your consumption.  FortisAlberta, is one of the electricity distribution companies in Alberta and through their Energy Your Way program provides some great information for consumers on reducing their consumption, monitoring their usage, and increasing the energy efficiency in their home.  Below you can see one of their YouTube videos on how to save money in your kitchen, one of the most energy intensive areas of our homes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFArjfWSgoQ

Also as part of the Energy Your Way program FortisAlberta has teamed up with Home Hardware Stores to provide customers with a free 10 watt LED lightbulb (a $14 value and the equivalent of a 60 watt incandescant) on Saturday Oct 18, 2014 at participating Home Hardware locations in the Fortis territory.

The reduction of air pollution that comes from reducing our energy usage at home will have a the positive effect of reducing electricity demand on the grid in Alberta.  According to Charting Alberta, of the 9343 MW of electricity being generated on Sept 30, 2014, 5143 MW or 55% is from coal fired generation.  If you thought that the oil sands were the largest industrial emitter of greenhouse gases in our province you might consider watching this news story recently aired on CTV regarding coal fired generation in Alberta.