Bill-credit electricity plans, explained

The plan applies a lump-sum credit — often $30 to $100 — in any month where your usage crosses a threshold, commonly 1,000 or 2,000 kWh. The advertised average price is then calculated at a usage level where the credit applies.

At exactly that usage, the advertised price is accurate. A little below it, the credit disappears entirely and your effective price jumps, sometimes by half again. There is no partial credit; it is a cliff, not a slope.

Household usage is not stable. A home that uses 1,100 kWh in August may use 800 in October, and on a plan with a 1,000 kWh threshold those two months are priced from completely different economics.

That makes the headline number a description of one hypothetical month rather than of your year. Two plans advertised at the same cents-per-kWh — one with a credit, one without — are not comparable figures at all, even though they are presented in the same units on the same page.

None of this is hidden. It is on the Electricity Facts Label, and retailers are entitled to sell these products. The problem is arithmetic, not honesty.

Bill-credit plans are excluded at retrieval, not filtered at display. They never enter the inventory a visitor can reach, so there is no toggle that switches them back on, no query string that reveals them, and no bug that can surface one.

The results page reports how many were left out at your address, because a shopper who has seen one advertised elsewhere is entitled to know it was a deliberate exclusion rather than an oversight.

The trade-off is real and worth stating: if your usage genuinely is high and stable every month, a bill-credit plan might have cost you less. This site is not the right tool for finding that out.