Setting up electricity when you move to Houston

Inside Houston the answer is straightforward: CenterPoint delivers, and you choose a retail provider. The wider metro is not uniform. Parts of Galveston County to the south-east are Texas-New Mexico Power, further out there are electric cooperatives, and to the north some addresses are served by a utility outside the competitive market entirely.

So if you are moving to "the Houston area" rather than to Houston, the ZIP check is doing real work. Two suburbs twenty minutes apart can be in different delivery territories with different plan lists.

Gulf Coast humidity gives Houston one of the longest cooling seasons in the country. Air conditioning runs into October and starts again in March, so annual usage here is high and relatively flat compared with North or West Texas.

If you are moving from a cooler state, compare plans at the 2,000 kWh benchmark on the Electricity Facts Label rather than the 1,000 kWh figure retailers advertise at. For a house in this climate, the higher benchmark is frequently the realistic one.

Arrange service a few days before your move-in date. Starts at an address with an existing energised meter are administrative and do not require a visit; a new build or a property that has been vacant with the power off can take longer.

Summer is peak moving season here as everywhere, and it is also when a mistake costs the most — a house without air conditioning in August is not a minor inconvenience.

Your delivery utility. CenterPoint owns the wires, reads the meter and restores your power after a storm regardless of which retailer bills you, and hurricane-season outage response is their job rather than your provider's.

Switching retailers involves no work at the property, no interruption, and no equipment. It is a change to who is responsible for billing the energy at your meter, and the electricity itself is identical before and after.