How we know
One plan, from the document to the number
Every rate on this site is worked out the same way. Here is the whole thing on a single plan, with nothing skipped.
The plan
Just Energy — Smart Choice - 12, listed for Oncor. The state's plan listing advertises it at 10.9¢ per kWh. That is the number a shopper sees.
What its Electricity Facts Label actually says
The EFL is the document the retailer is legally held to. Pulled apart, this plan is four numbers:
| Energy charge | 17.000¢ / kWh |
| Monthly base charge | $0.00 |
| Oncor delivery | 6.0295¢ / kWh + $4.06 / mo |
| Bill credit | $125.35 when a month reaches 1,000 kWh |
Quoted from the label: “$125 bill credit when monthly usage is >= 1000 kWh $125 bill credit when monthly usage is ≥ 1000 kWh. Transmission and distribution charges passed through at cost. Please refer to the Electricity Facts Label for additional details. Call our Customer Hotline at (866) 327-0150 to sign up today!”
First, does our reading hold up?
Before trusting any of it, we rebuild the state's own published prices from those four numbers. If we cannot reproduce them, we have misread the document and nothing after this point is worth anything.
| At | Published | Ours |
|---|---|---|
| 500 kWh a month | 23.8¢ | 23.84¢ |
| 1,000 kWh a month | 10.9¢ | 10.90¢ |
| 2,000 kWh a month | 17¢ | 16.96¢ |
They match. So the reading is right, and the published price is not wrong either — it is just only true at one usage level.
Now the year
A bill credit is tested every month, not once a year. Texas households use roughly two and a half times as much electricity in August as in March, so we bill the plan month by month across that shape and add it up. At an average of 1,000 kWh a month:
| Month | kWh | Bill | |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 688 | $162.41 | |
| February | 611 | $144.72 | |
| March | 606 | $143.62 | |
| April | 629 | $148.87 | |
| May | 880 | $206.63 | |
| June | 1,306 | $179.38 | credit paid |
| July | 1,632 | $254.55 | credit paid |
| August | 1,796 | $292.41 | credit paid |
| September | 1,424 | $206.74 | credit paid |
| October | 924 | $216.85 | |
| November | 692 | $163.52 | |
| December | 812 | $191.15 |
That is the whole method
Read the legal document, prove the reading against the published price, then bill it across a real year instead of a single flattering month. We do it for every plan on the site.
Plan data from the Public Utility Commission of Texas' plan listing. Delivery charges from the PUCT's published tariffs, re-read daily. Rates change often; this example was computed on 2026-08-14.