TXU Energy Helps Texas Electric Grid and Its Customers with Energy Education, Solutions and Incentives to Control Consumption

TXU Energy continues to lead the highly competitive Texas retail electricity market by educating consumers and giving them the solutions and incentives to control their electricity consumption and put an end to wasteful habits.

“We take very deliberate steps to encourage and empower both our residential and business customers to save money and avoid wasteful consumption,” said Michael Grasso, chief marketing officer for TXU Energy. "While some customers see the individual benefits of saving money, others clearly recognize the impact that their personal efforts to conserve have on Texas and the reliability of the state’s main electricity grid.”

Products

• Brighten® iThermostat – Residential and business customers who use this energy savings solution from TXU Energy can control the fully integrated, intelligent thermostat at home or remotely—via the Web or free smartphone apps—to easily reduce electricity consumption and spending, even while they’re on the go. Residential customers with iThermostats also participate in a conservation program provided by TXU Energy. The program allows tens of thousands of TXU Energy customers to participate in statewide peak demand response events, which temporarily cycle off air conditioning units. When ERCOT warned that demand levels could lead to rolling outages during the summer of 2011, we managed 15 different cycling events, with each event reducing 30-45 megawatts of demand from the grid.
• TXU Energy MyEnergy Dashboard^SM – Among other things, the dashboard allows customers to track details of their usage and find opportunities to reduce consumption. For customers with smart meters, it also provides a forecast based on current usage patterns of what their usage and cost at home could be by the end of the month, giving them valuable insights that can lead to reduced overall consumption, month to month. MyEnergy Dashboard is also available to some business customers.
• SolarLease® Service Package – In cooperation with SolarCity, TXU Energy’s Solar Lease service gives North Texas homeowners solar power systems that can power their homes with immediate cost savings.
• Brighten^® GreenBack – TXU Energy is the only retail electricity provider in Texas to offer incentives for making businesses more energy efficient. This program has provided business owners more than $10 million so they can use less electricity and save more money.

Plans

• TXU Energy Free Nights – The innovative TXU Energy Free Nights plans create an incentive for customers to shift their electricity consumption away from hours of peak demand and peak heat to the nighttime when wind-generated electricity is more readily available and market prices are lower.
• TXU Energy Texas Choice Wind – TXU Energy offers service plans that are powered by up to 100 percent wind-generated electricity. The plans have price guarantees, as well as access to the company’s suite of free solutions for monitoring and managing consumption.
• TXU Energy Distributed Renewable Generation – In this buy-back program, the company purchases surplus power generated by customers’ solar- and wind-powered systems.

Services

• Mobile applications – TXU Energy makes it easy for customers to track and control their consumption through a free mobile website and native apps for Apple® iOS- and Android^TM-based mobile devices.
• TXU Energy Electricity Usage Report – TXU Energy delivers a free weekly email that contains easy-to-read charts and graphs that give customers insights into and projections for their electricity usage so they can better control and manage their consumption.
• Energy Management Alerts – These free automatic alerts allow customers to know when their consumption is on track to exceed their individually set thresholds in time to curtail their consumption and stay within their spending preferences.
• Brighten^® Personal Energy Advisor – TXU Energy offers all residential electricity consumers free access to personalized recommendations, tips, tools and project instructions to reduce consumption through better efficiency.
• TXU Energy Solar Academy - Partnering with the National Energy Education Development Project, or NEED, TXU Energy brings solar technology and energy lessons into the classroom, providing students and teachers with an interactive learning experience.
• Brighten^® Online Energy Store – TXU Energy provides a convenient, one-stop shop featuring a wide selection of competitively priced products that can help consumers save energy and make their home more energy efficient.

“We have and will continue to invest in service plans, technology and educational resources that make it easy for consumers to understand and control their consumption,” Grasso continued. “We’ve seen tremendous adoption by hundreds of thousands of our customers who engaged with us to manage their energy consumption in new and different ways.”

TXU Energy also plays its part to conserve and avoid wasteful consumption. Among other things:

• The company’s Irving headquarters building is LEED® Silver certified by the U.S. Green Building Council® and powered by renewable electricity.
• Office lights are controlled by motion sensors.
• Building lights are dimmed during peak demand periods.
• Window screens are lowered during peak demand periods to avoid temperature loss.
• Thermostats are raised during peak summer hours and outside of normal business hours.