The Real Reason Your Electric Bill Is Absurdly High
00;00;00;02 - 00;00;21;01
Unknown
All right. Welcome back to energy 101. We have Brittany Devlin from Dolby AI. And she is back in the studio because we had her on about a year or two ago on one of our umbrella podcast, Energy Bites. Her, John and Bobby got into the dirty details about the grid and lots of other stuff that I only half understood.
00;00;21;01 - 00;00;42;20
Unknown
So we're here to kind of tackle that back in a more dumbed down way, hence our slogan, and really get to know the grid and, how like, you know, what turns on our lights, what's going on. And I want to kind of like, build out the whole pipeline, basically, and get into, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly.
00;00;42;23 - 00;01;04;24
Unknown
And maybe like, some advice and tricks and stuff like that. So. Sounds good. Cool. So let's get a little background real quick because, so you work for one of these companies that basically help with, you know, that you pay your utilities through, which is something everyone relates to, and some other background and stuff like that.
00;01;04;26 - 00;01;28;08
Unknown
I mean, I went I, I was on your LinkedIn and it says, you're an undergraduate and Nano photonics. Oh, I did some undergraduate research in nano photonics at rice. Ultimately, I got, a degree in physics, biology and art. So what is your actual, like, background and what do you do? Not just for your current job, but just like in general, what would you say you do and tackle the most?
00;01;28;10 - 00;01;55;29
Unknown
I mean, I think I think in general I'm a problem solver that that's what gives me, satisfaction and the drive. But throughout my career, I've done quite a few different things. I started out, doing, wholesale energy risk management. That's kind of before you get to the retailer, your gas bill, the big people that are that are doing, the deals with the power plants on how to sell their power and trading for them and around them.
00;01;56;01 - 00;02;22;24
Unknown
So I spent a long time doing that. I was at Dynegy for a while. Then I went to 20 goal, which was really fun. And in between there I was at Merrill Lynch. Then I left and went to the aviation industry for a while, came back to energy again, at 20 goal again. And then, I moved on to become the CTO for Energy Ogre, which is, basically an, a retail aggregator.
00;02;22;24 - 00;02;41;20
Unknown
You pay them ten bucks a month and they take care of all of your contracts and payments, etc. with your energy company in Texas. Yeah. And we'll, we'll definitely get in on that. But, you slipped in a little something there about an aviation company. I mean, everything kind of sounded the same. And companies I've heard of, but then you just kind of kind of doing that.
00;02;41;22 - 00;03;07;25
Unknown
So that's like what you're doing right now, right? Right. Right. So is. Yes. So Dobby is basically, airline business intelligence that that's through a chat interface. It's basically an app layer that you put on top of your data that understands, understands what the data means, understands the context of the people using it, etc.. So I can went back to aviation, but really, it's very similar to energy in a way.
00;03;07;27 - 00;03;29;08
Unknown
It sounds kind of weird, but but when you think about energy, you've got the historical daily prices that settle every day. You have people trading on the future curve for what you know, what oil will be and January 2026, etc. so very same. The data is structured in aviation because you have everybody that flew right. That's the historical settled.
00;03;29;14 - 00;03;48;09
Unknown
And then you have what you book out in the future. So the pricing curve, the way that the data is all structured together is very, very similar. You can think of kind of, I guess like the, the airplanes are like the pipelines and the people are like the molecules. Yeah. Are the electrons or whatever. Yeah.
00;03;48;15 - 00;04;15;21
Unknown
Wait, so like, the customer are the people who are buying flights or. Right, the websites that sell the ticket prices, right. Or you can buy direct through, you know, you can buy it through a travel agent. You can book direct online. You can use one of those sites like Expedia. But ultimately what my tool does is it helps basically the people that are figuring out where the flights should go, where the flight makes sense to go, where where is the place with the most demand?
00;04;15;21 - 00;04;33;25
Unknown
Where, where are you going to make the most money? And it can be really complicated because, you know, you can fly from point A to point B pretty much anywhere in the world, depending on who you're flying with. So, it's kind of like, to, to take it back to energy. It's kind of like what the people that are using my tool or what?
00;04;33;27 - 00;05;10;14
Unknown
Maybe a gas scheduler would do, wholesale energy trading company. Yeah. That's so cool. That's like, probably the first time I'm having someone on where I want to use our product. I mean, we have people who are like, like, run like things that, like, aren't meant for consumer. So I just in general, way that makes it think, that makes me think of this dumb thing that I had one time where, I was traveling or planning a travel and basically, let's say I was going to like Seattle and there was a layover in Chicago, and, either I was thinking about doing it before looking into it or like, just got
00;05;10;14 - 00;05;25;17
Unknown
the idea and I was like, what if I just got off in Chicago and and got get back on and then I got like a free cheaper, you know, maybe if you compare, flight day to Chicago, that was like I looked it up and like, you can't do that. Basically you can't. They really hate it when you do that.
00;05;25;17 - 00;05;43;27
Unknown
And they find ways to find you. Like your flight. Yeah. They fly. It's a huge travel. So, little tip there. Tip number one. Don't do that. It did have a name for that, like they do. And it's escaping me right now. I forget it's like second flagging or I. I don't remember what it is, but I read something about that.
00;05;43;27 - 00;06;00;27
Unknown
They're really trying to crack down on that. It used to be quite easy to do, but they make it pretty difficult now. Yeah, it's like a rare. I feel like it's pretty rare to get this set up where it's like a flight directly to Chicago from, like, Houston would be like $200. But if you go to Seattle and it's a layover and it's 150, it's like, well, there you go.
00;06;00;27 - 00;06;22;04
Unknown
You just say 50 bucks. And that's where the scam don't do that. It's it's crazy. There is one flight I had to drive to Austin to fly to Hong Kong, and it just it was thousands of dollars difference, which I don't know, just blew my mind. But yeah, yeah, I don't I have the tool, but the tool really helps the people at the airlines make more money, not necessarily the consumer.
00;06;22;04 - 00;06;38;19
Unknown
So I can't really use that to pick my flights. Yeah. So tip number two is, when you live in like a metropolis, whatever you want to call, like the Texas triangle, up in the northeast, and you can drive to another city in, like an hour or two. You can, like, save a lot of money if you just look up like, oh, the Dallas airport or the Austin airport, right?
00;06;38;20 - 00;06;55;23
Unknown
I also I always look up the San Antonio airport and it's never ever in ten years been a cheaper alternative. But I have driven 3 or 4 hours to Dallas, paid for like, there's a hotel near the airport, like in grapevine or whatever that, like we'll keep your car for like $10 a day, and then you're still saving, like 100 plus, right?
00;06;55;24 - 00;07;12;01
Unknown
There's lots of hacks, but that's that draw when you get off the flight and you have to drive four hours home, it's like, why do I do this? To save $100? It's the worst. Especially, you know, living in Houston where you can get a direct flight pretty much anywhere. Yeah. But you know, that was those are harder struggle days.
00;07;12;03 - 00;07;33;13
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let's get into some, energy talk. Let's see. Yeah. There's so many ways I wanted to take this today. So I was I was listening to you, and you were talking about being, part of energy yoga. And then John, who was, hosting the podcast, said he uses it as a customer. And it kind of reminded me, like, and I just moved back here to Houston.
00;07;33;13 - 00;07;51;21
Unknown
I've been here, and since July, and I'd kind of been out of the city since, like, Covid. And there's billboards everywhere about, like, save energy. You know, we don't charge you at night, we don't charge you on the weekends. And I'm like, you know, and I get it because like, your energy use is kind of like lower.
00;07;51;21 - 00;08;15;15
Unknown
So like, it seems like it sounds like a, like a legit thing if you just use logic, I guess. But something about it kind of gives me like scam vibes. Some of it makes you think it's not worth it. What are those billboards? And we don't have to name any companies, but go ahead if you want to. I mean, any of them, any of those, anything where you're not paying a fixed energy rate and they're always making their money somehow.
00;08;15;18 - 00;08;38;16
Unknown
There's probably some caps. There's all kinds of, small, small little phrases at the bottom of that that kind of tell you how you're going to make up for it. So usually, at least now, and for, for a while now, a fixed rate energy plan is, is what you want to be in. Like every once a month I pay a gas fee and an electric fee, and the gas is always super cheap.
00;08;38;18 - 00;08;56;08
Unknown
And an electric one is always scary and high, especially during a summer. So. And I feel like if you plot it out, it kind of like plateaus in winter or, like, goes down and wet or plateau. It means flat or it goes down in winter and up in summer. Right? Because like, the AC is like the most like sucking your energy.
00;08;56;11 - 00;09;14;02
Unknown
Absolutely. Everything's a lot hotter. You're losing. You're using a lot more energy. If you're not on some sort of a contract, you should be on a contract because it can even out the prices you pay. Even when you get into a contract, the month that you actually get into the contract can absolutely affect, what you're going to pay in the future.
00;09;14;02 - 00;09;38;14
Unknown
So that's why I always like the energy over. I've always been a huge fan. Long before I worked at the company, I was, a customer, and I'm still a customer. Since I left the company. There's really there's really nobody like them that's going to take the fiduciary responsibility of of their customer into account. A lot of other people that do something similar, they, they may make certain deals with certain energy companies.
00;09;38;14 - 00;10;08;29
Unknown
So they're going to push you into that plan, whether it makes sense for you or not. At Energy Ogre, you're always getting the most cost effective plan. And there's people looking out for you doing it. No special deals or anything like that. So I trust them. I don't think there's anybody that does quite what they do. I'm a big fan, so this is going to turn into like a consulting session because like, I'm going to I'm going to ask us like a genuine, like customer of like what I do now and like, almost like ask you to convince me to like, maybe think about what to do with what I do now.
00;10;08;29 - 00;10;31;00
Unknown
So I use TCU, which is who. Who is the that's like reliant or energy, right? It's like one of the big energy companies. There are utility. Or I guess they used to be their utility. Anyway. But usually they, I think they operated out of Dallas initially and now they're here to as it's just a retail energy company like anybody else.
00;10;31;00 - 00;10;49;26
Unknown
And we can break all this down really. Because I rather I want to learn kind of just like like I said, the pipeline of how all this work. So TXU is also energy like NRG, right or no or that different, I can't remember. It's I've been out of it for a while. So they're like a big they're like a big company that everyone uses essentially in Houston.
00;10;49;26 - 00;11;15;28
Unknown
Right. Usually I think everybody mainly in Dallas here people would use reliant like before energy got deregulated, I used I you'd pay your bill to Houston lighting and power. Okay. Then energy got our electricity got deregulated, and you had all these competing companies. So. Yeah. NRG reliant, all the big companies, they may do a million different things, but they probably have spun up a retail electricity company that can compete in Texas.
00;11;16;01 - 00;11;42;03
Unknown
And so it's a separate, arm of their company than the rest of what they do. So there's a lot of people competing, to do this. And that's why you see all of the billboards, all of the flashy signs, you know, Matthew McConaughey or whatever. Typically. Yeah, yeah. Oh, or Griddy everybody's favorite, but, well, they're actually like, they they're like been sued, right?
00;11;42;03 - 00;12;08;16
Unknown
Like they're like, oh, man. Well, nobody was ready for they've actually, I think outlawed the contracts that they were offering. So, yeah, there's lots of people to choose from. There are lots of gimmicks that it's really hard to know what that actually means, unless you're really going to get out your magnifying glass and your calculator. But, typically the prices can be somewhat competitive, with each other.
00;12;08;19 - 00;12;27;24
Unknown
But in the end, a fixed price rate is, is the safest thing possible. I feel like I'm doing the most surface level thing, which is, use, like just one of these big companies where I don't I didn't do anything special. I just gave them my information. And then I pay on time, and my lights stay on.
00;12;27;24 - 00;12;45;27
Unknown
Right? Right. So what are like, some hoops that you can jump through with these other companies? Like, do you put in more effort? Is it the same thing? Am I just like an idiot and should just switch now or is there like some kind of, I mean, it's going to be really hard to stick with, one company and, and pay the cheapest price all the time.
00;12;45;27 - 00;13;06;28
Unknown
Maybe they have some intro offers or something like that. That, that you wouldn't have access to. At the end of the day, if you're electricity goes out, that company that you're paying your electricity bill to, it has nothing to do with it. Right? It's the local utility that's going to come and fix the power lines, etc..
00;13;06;28 - 00;13;34;20
Unknown
So I mean, customer service, if you're somebody that calls customer service a lot, you can look at power to choose and find the people with the best customer service rankings. Like that's really the only interaction that you're going to have with that company are paying the bill to is, is let me update my credit card or asking about your plans or something like that, but they can absolutely not help you and are no more dependable with putting the electricity on in your house than than anybody else.
00;13;34;22 - 00;13;51;16
Unknown
Is there like monopolies? Like because, you know, like you, you go to a house or a rental or whatever and like, you're locked into like the internet, right? Like AT&T loves to do that. And Comcast, they're all known for being super evil. These private companies that somehow like, oh, you live at this address, you can only get them.
00;13;51;18 - 00;14;11;21
Unknown
And maybe it has to do with like the wire because like, the wires are physically in the ground and they don't have like a different company. Yeah. I mean, so so it's not like that. Basically you can nobody is going to take nothing changes when you change your electricity company from one person to the next. There's no infrastructure at your house that is changing.
00;14;11;21 - 00;14;33;15
Unknown
They're not having to route something differently. It's you're still getting your electricity from the infrastructure of the utility. So some of those charges on your bill are actually the utility charges to pay for, long term things like transmission lines, etc. for the grid. And those are those charges that, you can't really they're, they're the same throughout all the companies.
00;14;33;15 - 00;14;50;20
Unknown
It's like being taxed by private companies in a way. Right? Right. So I would say there's not really a monopoly. It's kind of the opposite. There's so many different people competing for your business here that, it does make the competition does make it to where you can find a range of rates. And if you do your research, you can find the cheapest one.
00;14;50;20 - 00;15;06;16
Unknown
Right? That's where the research comes in. That's where to aggregate companies like Ogr. Right. And because it's set up like that, I mean, imagine if the internet was like that, where like AT&T and like five other companies all connected to your house, and you could just switch to whoever's, like, running the fastest that day, that's like some kind of dream scenario.
00;15;06;16 - 00;15;28;05
Unknown
I mean, there's got to be places in the world. I'd do something like that, maybe. I'm sure there is, but. But I don't know if you if you want me to get I would. I'll convince you very quickly. I'm. I'm a huge energy yoga fan. To me, I work there. I've, I've experienced my bill being cut in half when I first started with them.
00;15;28;07 - 00;15;58;15
Unknown
Initially, I did so much. I used to work a ton. I did analytics on energy all day long. The last thing I wanted to do was go and call somebody a customer service and switch my plan or do the research, whatever. So what happens is if if you're in one of those plans and you're not locked into a contract, you're getting completely screwed on a month to month price, which is basically the highest possible price you can pay for, for the internet, for sorry, not the internet, for your electricity.
00;15;58;17 - 00;16;22;06
Unknown
So to me, energy is $10 a month and my time, I, I hate being on the phone and on hold with customer service, setting things up with energy. Over. You're so unique. You give them $10 a month, and, they you give them your credit card information and everything that they would need to sign you up.
00;16;22;06 - 00;16;40;24
Unknown
And then you're done. They start immediately hunting for for the lowest price for what your usage is, because they take that into account to that can that can change which plan to put you in. And you never have to do anything again. I have mine set up on autopay. The only thing I've ever I think I've only had to contact energy Oga when I didn't work there.
00;16;40;24 - 00;17;00;22
Unknown
Maybe once or twice. When I forgot my password and needed to update my credit card or something like that. But other than that, it's just you kind of kick back and and let, let it, let it work for you. So to me, I mean, I don't know what your time is worth for you, but, you know, $10 a month, $120 a year.
00;17;00;24 - 00;17;32;25
Unknown
Now, you don't have to jack jack with it again. So if I'm paying like $500 on a brutal July and I switch and spend $10 that month, but they get me down to 300, right? Right. So I end up paying 310 over 500. So like that's that's the simple sales pitch right there. Right. Exactly. And I would say that most people that come to energy over experience of significant reduction, because there are different things, there are different strategies that they can use to get lower prices.
00;17;32;27 - 00;17;49;22
Unknown
Yeah. Okay. I mean, it sounds too good to be true, but I'm not trying to like, it's getting turning into a commercial now, but I know intimately like, I will legitimately, go on a website this week and look this up so I don't know what to tell you. It's just one of those. You should. Absolutely. And I have to say, you know, I do not work for Energy Ogre.
00;17;49;23 - 00;18;10;15
Unknown
I'm just a big fan. So. Yeah. And, I, I literally spent over $500 on my electricity, in July. So how big is your house? It's a three story townhouse, 2000ft². And we go into detail about, like, how, like the shape of your home and stuff like that works, if you understand. But, there's a few things I want to bounce back on.
00;18;10;18 - 00;18;34;00
Unknown
So one. So if energy energy was like, they're essentially like, tapping into different sources throughout the day or like maybe on a longer spectrum, right? Oh, every day. And they're also negotiating. They actually have the power to negotiate for lower prices, with certain companies. So there are times where we'll get some pricing plans for our customers that maybe aren't available.
00;18;34;03 - 00;18;52;22
Unknown
Everywhere else, I keep saying our customers, but their customers, let's get into the pipeline territory so I can get get a better understanding of this. So let's just, let's like, really just dumb it down. Like, everyone's house is just plugged in by, like, one big wire, right? Essentially. Okay, okay. And that wire feeds into what, like a transformer nearby?
00;18;52;24 - 00;19;10;23
Unknown
Oh, gosh. Yes. The transformer. I know substations too, right? There's substation. So every time you're like, you're driving around town, you always see this big, ugly squares with all these crazy metal like, like it's like it looks like a playground, but like death metal. That's like the. That's basically what connects to your house. It's like your local power plant.
00;19;10;25 - 00;19;30;05
Unknown
And that substations, like, connected further around to an actual power plant. Like eventually at the end of all the wires, there is a power plant generating electricity. Right? Okay. And like even sometimes it's hard to remember that, like, everything is literally physically connected. And this is not you know, and that's the grid, right? So like in Texas everything's like Ercot.
00;19;30;10 - 00;19;53;04
Unknown
So that means everything in Texas. And that's like I know it's like 95% Texas is literally all connected. So like everything is touching like it isn't. There's no there's no Wi-Fi electricity. Right. Like it's all literally everything is literally boom, boom, boom, boom connected forever. And then you think of like the two big grids like the east and the West Coast, like you're talking about thousands of miles of just shit that is spider web together.
00;19;53;08 - 00;20;21;11
Unknown
Well, they're all connected, actually. Texas is the least connected from all the grids. And, that, you know, when people joke about Texas seceding or maybe they're not joking, we could manage most of our power, I think. Or paso or somewhere around there. There's, like, a small connection. There's there's maybe a couple of connections to the rest of the grid, but this grid is very much self-contained compared to everything else, because even the east and west grids are completely intertwined.
00;20;21;11 - 00;20;43;03
Unknown
Right. And that's a whole. Yeah, that's very interesting. But, okay, so where are these utilities, changing, you know, where where is Oga switching? You know, it's like, okay, let's not let's stop using company A, let's use company B because they're cheaper today. Like, how is that what does that look like I don't know. Well there's two ways it can happen.
00;20;43;03 - 00;21;08;04
Unknown
One is let's just say you're already an energy Oga customer energy Oga puts you into a contract. They're always going to put you into a contract unless the prices are so high and they're waiting. Maybe. But almost always they're going to immediately put you into a contract. Whether it's six months, nine months, 12 months, sometimes they'll do two years when they see one, you're energy contract is up.
00;21;08;04 - 00;21;26;06
Unknown
It's expired. Right. So you're at the end of the one year right. Energy Oga goes and it looks at what the prices are now. It looks at what you're usages. And regardless of what other company or with it will choose the most cost effective price for your usage and place you in a new contract without you having to do anything.
00;21;26;06 - 00;21;51;14
Unknown
How often can the contract switch? It can switch quite a bit. It really depends on the market. One thing they do is, sometimes because the term of your contract is also going to directly impact the, the price that you're paying. So sometimes longer term contracts can be cheaper. They might put you in a longer term contract and then break that contract once the prices go down and roll you in something else.
00;21;51;21 - 00;22;12;14
Unknown
Those are some settings that you can set up when you enroll. Like how much are you willing to pay to break a contract? How much money do you need to be saving? Right? Are you okay with paying 200 extra dollars in a month? If you're going to save, you know, $1,000 a year or something like that. So there's other things you can set up, and so they'll break your contracts and take care of that for you as well.
00;22;12;17 - 00;22;33;21
Unknown
Sometimes, the longer term contracts are the only thing that makes sense because the prices are so crazy in the market. So, it just kind of depends on what your situation is and what's going on in the market. Essentially, you you pay for the aggregate company to switch for you not only switch, but break contracts and do the math to know that it's worth it.
00;22;33;23 - 00;22;58;16
Unknown
Or you just do it yourself and just put in all the work. I mean, is it that simple? It's that simple. I would say I just, I think that, the, if you're not an electricity expert, then knowing what the actual going rate is for everything, I mean, you can go to power and choose and kind of look at it, but but they have all the analytic team there to to really look at what the terms are and what that means and what the market's doing.
00;22;58;19 - 00;23;21;02
Unknown
So I mean, unless you have your if you think about it, you sign up for a contract. You did a great job shopping. Right. Well, let's just say you're not worried about it. The energy prices drop right. You're not even going to know unless you're looking for that contract. So unless you're looking at it every single day and that's what you like to do, it just makes a lot more sense to go with an aggregator.
00;23;21;02 - 00;23;38;05
Unknown
To me. Yeah, this is turning into, like, I'm just like, taking like, I'm like. I'm like. Like I said, consulting. Like, I'm taking notes, and I'm going to watch this later. I have to watch it because at the end of it. But I'm also going to watch it while I have another laptop open so I can switch my plan because, you brought up the what's the choice?
00;23;38;05 - 00;23;58;08
Unknown
The energy choice thing. Oh, power to choose. Is that a Texas thing? What is it? It's a Texas thing. I can't remember the history of it, but I think that when the market got deregulated, like whoever, you know, the PUC or I don't know what entity it is, mandated that this website was created. So where everybody can see, their choices.
00;23;58;09 - 00;24;19;10
Unknown
Okay. So yeah, like I'm sitting here like one thinking I had to do TXU because I'm like thinking it's like internet monopoly comparison. Like like, I don't know, it takes you. That's everywhere for sure. And then I'm paying $500 the second month I'm there, and I'm just so lazy in such a dumb customer that I'm like, I guess my life sucks and I'm paying this much.
00;24;19;10 - 00;24;36;06
Unknown
Like I'm not going to look up shit. And sorry, I haven't even heard of that. And, so is that a useful tool? It's like, is it like a government run tool? What is it? It's a terrible tool. I mean, it's great. Like, if you're not going to use an aggregator, it is. It is the best place I, I, I'm aware of.
00;24;36;06 - 00;24;57;21
Unknown
I mean, anything's better than what the hell I'm doing. Yeah, you'll look at it like it's a completely antiquated site that's not being kept up by any of the companies that are on it. It's got rankings and things like that. It's a useful site, if you're not going to go with an aggregator. But, again, when you go with an aggregator, you might be getting rates that aren't, aren't on that site.
00;24;57;21 - 00;25;20;23
Unknown
There's also sometimes I'll do things like, let's see our contract at energy, or we'll do, let's say your contract is about to be up in two months. They might renegotiate the next contract with that company to extend the overall thing for two years to do the price cheaper. So there's some pretty fancy things that you can do.
00;25;20;25 - 00;25;48;02
Unknown
That, that they're doing at energy over that, that you may not have the, resources to do as a consumer. Okay. I think, I think I've gone gotten that enough. I'm going to go home and, and, renegotiate that. However, I am in a, I'm in like a year and a half lease and like, I mean, how many times you think, like, an aggregate would switch if I'm there for that long and I kind of, like, admit that I'm like, I am 100% moving in a year.
00;25;48;02 - 00;26;07;03
Unknown
Like, is that worth it? Well, I mean, they'll also move it with you as long as you move, you can move with energy over. So, I mean, they'll take care of your move and move out all of those different things. That's another service that they offer. In apartments. I mean, if you're paying $500 a month and it's a large apartment, it's a little bit different.
00;26;07;06 - 00;26;28;21
Unknown
I mean, for short term people that are leasing in apartments that are really small and their energy bill isn't that I getting a few cents, you know, a cent here or there on your contract maybe, maybe doesn't make that big of a difference. But, but you could absolutely use energy over. But you might if you're only going to stay someplace six months at a time, it might be easier to just go to power to choose.
00;26;28;23 - 00;26;51;17
Unknown
Okay, now let's get into this. Maybe the deepest will go, which is the energy mix, right? That's fueling everything for our houses. So, you know, you can look up on, EPA or whatever the site is where it shows you the daily Mix, and you can see Texas, you can maybe even see deeper, like counties and cities.
00;26;51;17 - 00;27;31;07
Unknown
Right? I'm not sure. What? Like, you know, how is the evolution and timeline of all that worked? There's obviously there's issues or benefits with renewables being kicked in Texas is I feel like a very interesting say it has a really healthy mix, a lot of wind, even a little bit of nuclear and stuff like that. And then, you know, I understand, but like maybe let's, you know, there's days, you know, where solar is used heavily and solar is barely used, obviously, or it's not being used at night because, the direct, you know, battery storage essentially, which, if we were to pretend like no one knows that is which is should
00;27;31;07 - 00;27;55;00
Unknown
be a lot of our, listeners, you know, how does that work stuff. So, how does the energy mix go from that source all the way to our homes? And how does that affect utilities and stuff like that? I think overall, having the I mean, it goes really it goes the power plants, the infrastructure that are set up by the utilities to your house.
00;27;55;00 - 00;28;15;16
Unknown
That's why the utility is the person really like, you don't get to choose your utility. That's that's just who it is, right? You can choose the other person. That's why I really like going with one company versus another. Because of their reputation. Maybe like is is is not a thing as well. So companies are out there being like we use a lot of renewables.
00;28;15;18 - 00;28;38;10
Unknown
Well he doesn't matter. I mean there's people that I do say they do 100% renewables, but unless they're like they own the plant like which they don't because they're a retail electricity company, you can't really tell. What they can do is they can do things like they can buy environmental credits that maybe, a solar farm might sell to them to offset the bad energy.
00;28;38;10 - 00;28;54;08
Unknown
But at the end of the day, none of these electrons are tagged and you can't really see where they're going. Oh that's interesting. Yeah. Because if if everything's coming from a wind farm and it's like, oh, obviously it's all renewables, it's going to some conduit that's mixed with natural gas, even coal, right. Then that's going to something else.
00;28;54;08 - 00;29;19;16
Unknown
And that's going to your home. So it's like it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. But like when you're when you're paying for green energy in any way, you're probably, it has something to do with them supporting the renewable energy, companies. But the, the mix is really interesting. Because for a while I don't, I don't know, do we surpass we I know we did in growth, we might have surpassed California and, solar.
00;29;19;16 - 00;29;41;12
Unknown
I can't remember, but we're up there with California and solar and renewables in general. And when I was last at energy, O'Gara, it was just before we brought all the batteries on to the system. So in California, they have what's called a curve, where the energy demand, because they were so heavily reliant on solar power. As soon as the sun went down, the demand went crazy.
00;29;41;12 - 00;30;18;12
Unknown
And so that's a problem they've dealt with for many years there and had blackouts and stuff because of that. Well, we were almost looking like we might get there, in Texas. Because the solar's great when the sun's shining, but when it's not and the sun goes down, it's a real problem. So, so even those, those hours that are the most expensive for for the electricity throughout the day are usually like when you're at work and everybody's got the air conditioning and the lights on, etc. those used to historically be the most expensive hours in the day, but then it started moving to the last hour in the day where that switch from when
00;30;18;12 - 00;30;40;21
Unknown
the sun goes down, became a really, really volatile, expensive hour, and a lot of risk for the, wholesalers to manage. But now, we brought so many batteries on. So what the batteries do is, like the solar power, it basically stores that energy and deploys it when needed. So that's a really helped us smooth out our curve.
00;30;40;21 - 00;31;03;14
Unknown
And I believe we brought out a ton of batteries on our grid in Texas. Yeah. That's some people don't realize is that again, going back to like the spiderweb of the grid like and everything's connected and it's feed, it's fed in essentially live like if you're running off solar, you're running off that fresh solar like that is those rays hit that solar panel hours ago or like I said, like essentially.
00;31;03;14 - 00;31;25;04
Unknown
Right, right. And, that technology which is called simply battery storage, is the idea of let's hit let's hit this, the sun hit the panels and let's hold it as like days, months, years we'd like that literally doesn't exist. Like, well, you can't you can't have a wind turbine spin, charge a battery and then have a charge for a year like that.
00;31;25;04 - 00;31;43;05
Unknown
That is that impossible right now? I don't really know how long they charge or how it's deployed. I just know that they're there now. And so it's like not totally gone away. So we're in a minute. We're in a mess. I mean, this is like this is what's going to be like huge in the future and hopefully like just just part of everyday life.
00;31;43;05 - 00;32;03;13
Unknown
It should be mundane. But for now, we can't just like charge all these batteries and whatever we got to burn, we got to use it. You got to use it. And I'm sure there's definitely some sort of deprecation that occurs with like the amount of energy that you're, you know, there's there's definitely energy lost in that process. But at least like temporarily, you know, the batteries are working really well.
00;32;03;15 - 00;32;25;21
Unknown
And definitely evening out our grid because the renewables is a great thing with the big AI boom. You know, a lot of people are it's so interesting with that, with, global climate right now, it's it's, you know, a lot of people are very anti renewables. But I think as far as energy is concerned, we need as much as we, as much as we can get.
00;32;25;21 - 00;32;51;24
Unknown
And renewables are some of the quickest ways to, to speed up energy plants. So I think like the more the merrier. Especially now that we have the battery technology. So I think that's making everything a lot better for us. In some states, I was just reading, I think the a lot, a lot of the big AI centers are happening basically in Texas and in Virginia right now.
00;32;51;24 - 00;33;07;13
Unknown
And a lot of that has to do with in Texas, it's very easy for, you know, a Bitcoin or, miner to do, a deal. It's much easier for them to spin up their own generation facilities and feed it directly to the plants so that they don't have to connect to the grid at all, which is great.
00;33;07;16 - 00;33;27;08
Unknown
I was reading about the plant. I think it's in Louisiana, and their utilities, like their their utility fee on there, is going to include the transmission that the utility has to build to the meter plant. And I don't know, there's probably some something good for them. Maybe meta is going to sell them a lot of excess energy or something like that, sell their energy back into the grid.
00;33;27;08 - 00;33;55;11
Unknown
But I thought that was kind of wild compared to what happens. Here. Yeah, there's a lot of that happening in Louisiana and to Virginia and everything in between. Like I hear Arkansas and, like Alabama or Missouri, some there's like, they're, they're they're basically collaborating with the states that are allowing it. But then there's issues. I think we talked about this with Haley on another episode about like how it kind of goes into the utility fees of customers who live there.
00;33;55;11 - 00;34;12;13
Unknown
And it's get it. It's a little getting a little dicey. Yeah. I thought I thought I thought that was interesting that they were passing it on to the consumer. I mean, those those charges are really small. And the reason they are really small. Well, one, we don't have enough transmission built anyway. Right? So they're not building enough transmission.
00;34;12;13 - 00;34;39;29
Unknown
All the wind that we have, it can't even get to the grid because there's so much congestion at different points. So there's definitely an infrastructure problem that needs to be solved with the grid everywhere in the US. But but building out those transmission lines are those little utility charges that you're getting. And they have the luxury of spreading the cost of that out over 20 or 30 years, instead of just hitting it all upfront with like a company would have to pay for their own transmission or something like that.
00;34;39;29 - 00;35;04;04
Unknown
So, it is it is interesting, but transmission is a problem in Texas. As we've seen, and it's a problem everywhere. What? We can build as much energy as we want, but if we can't get it to a home, then, there's going to be a problem. Now, we we don't, we we take for granted how, you know, we just live our lives every day.
00;35;04;04 - 00;35;27;11
Unknown
The power never goes out unless, like, physically, something's happening, like, outside, where it's like, it makes sense. Where, other countries, even first world countries deal with that. They do. I don't know about you, but, was it last year or the year before with derechos, all of these different things? I, I have a generator, luckily, and I got it, before a Uri the big snowstorm.
00;35;27;11 - 00;35;48;19
Unknown
And it has saved me. I think about it hasn't. Come on. I can't remember it coming on more than once. Maybe during a storm this year, but the year before, it came on 4 or 5 times throughout the year, and it ran for over a week, two different times. So I don't know something about that. Like, I hear my generator, it's really loud, it's revving up, and I get really excited when it comes off.
00;35;48;22 - 00;36;06;18
Unknown
But I think about all the if I go outside and I see all the street lights are out, everything's out, and I think about like, what? How is this happening? You know, why is a power go out all the time here? Yeah. Oh, that's in Houston. In Houston. Yeah. He's he's in I guess he's a little scary. But I just moved here.
00;36;06;20 - 00;36;31;16
Unknown
And, I have noticed it's a little a little more stuff like that happens, but it's usually storm related. So it's usually a storm related. You know, hurricanes and what have you. Yeah. Let's talk about natural gas fueling most of things. Right. So like most of the mix these days is natural gas. And it has been increasing because since the shale revolution and stuff like that.
00;36;31;18 - 00;36;56;27
Unknown
And there's basically something y'all were talking about on energy bites about, you know, gas prices, like just from the wholesale point to the utility companies affecting how they charge, you know, the basic customers and their electricity, like, how is all that tie together? And, what's kind of going on with that? Well, so Houston, I mean, Houston, Texas in general is it's mainly natural gas.
00;36;57;04 - 00;37;22;26
Unknown
There's different mixes throughout the country, but natural gas is our big thing here. So the natural gas is supplying the power plant, right? The power plant is buying that natural gas on on the market, the wholesale market out there. So that price that they're buying to run their power plants and give you power is it's always had a really strong correlation, the natural gas price with what you actually pay on your electricity bill.
00;37;23;01 - 00;37;42;00
Unknown
So as the wholesale natural gas is price prices go up. You can also see that your energy prices go up and when it goes down, vice versa. It seems like that correlation, has been that not as tight as it used to be. It's still there. I haven't really done the research on it in the last few months.
00;37;42;00 - 00;38;01;20
Unknown
You know, I haven't been at energy either for about a year now, so honestly, I haven't really looked at it since then, but, the correlation is starting to break apart a little bit the last time I heard, and a lot of it has to do with the Bitcoin mining and other different, forces at play. But it's just kind of crazy to me because the price is still not that high.
00;38;01;22 - 00;38;20;20
Unknown
When I started out, so natural gas prices has been around 2 or $3 for, I don't know, years and years and years and years, a decade, right. I'm not sure how long. You know, it can be volatile during storms and in the winter, but the long term pricing hasn't really shifted that much compared to when I started in the industry.
00;38;20;20 - 00;38;47;14
Unknown
It was just after, Enron collapsed and I remember natural gas being like $7, $8. They were negotiating something at a company I was in with their credit facility to, to be tied to $12 natural gas. So that just kind of blows me away. How expensive that could be, how cheap it is now. But still, these small deviations in the small prices is is completely correlated to your bill.
00;38;47;22 - 00;39;09;01
Unknown
But that's because the energy mostly is coming from that natural gas. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean they pay for the gas and then they distribute and profit, you know, based off their price. But why why are they kind of offsetting it. You know, like are they is they kind of getting scammy or are they trying to like take advantage of something or.
00;39;09;04 - 00;39;30;29
Unknown
No, I mean, the natural gas is very, very heavily regulated. They're all kinds of deals that are affecting the market. A lot of it has to do with how much gas they have in storage, what they have to pull out. You know, was it a extra hot summer? Do they have too much gas? So when they're actually storing the gas, that has a big, big impact on what the natural gas prices are.
00;39;31;06 - 00;39;49;12
Unknown
So you can see, like the summer months and the winter months, even the contracts that you have when they're coming up with what your fixed prices for a full year for an electricity contract, they're factoring in that the natural gas is expensive in this part of the year, cheaper in this part of the year. And they have to like one way, predict basically.
00;39;49;12 - 00;40;12;24
Unknown
Absolutely. Okay. And why exactly did they have to like why can't they just like open the valve, close the valve. Like what's the what's going on behind the scenes and why isn't so somebody actually owns that gas? The gas is all sitting in storage or, you know, underground wherever or wherever it may be. Right? So somebody owns that gas, they have made a deal with somebody to purchase the gas, right?
00;40;12;24 - 00;40;40;01
Unknown
Like a company like I used to work at for Twin Eagle. I'm going to buy the gas from these people that are gas producers. Right. Well, I'm going to sell that gas and make a margin. Like, let's just say I bought, you know, a box of gas every day for one year. Then I'm going to go and I'm going to sell that box of gas every day for one year for the same price, plus, you know, 10% or 20%, whatever it is.
00;40;40;01 - 00;41;02;27
Unknown
Right? Well, at the end of the day, the producer has already sold the gas to this marketer. The only people that are going to get the gas are the people that the marketer sold the gas to. So it's all kind of a possession thing of who who actually owns the gas and who has like the pipeline for the gas to travel through, who has the capacity on that pipeline to ship the gas through, because that's another component to it as well.
00;41;03;00 - 00;41;18;22
Unknown
Yeah. There's so many moving parts and like parties, you know, there's so many parties at play and there's so many different types of contracts that can get very, very complicated. It's not just who you buy and sell the gas, it's you have to make sure that you're paying for the capacity on the pipeline to be able to sell the gas.
00;41;18;22 - 00;41;38;11
Unknown
You don't want to buy the capacity unless you know that you're going to have something to ship on it. So it gets it gets very complicated. But, at the end of the day, somebody is buying the gas and somebody is selling the gas. And so you can't it's not free. It's not owned by a utility. There are deals that have been done and people that have been promised.
00;41;38;17 - 00;41;59;01
Unknown
Yeah, but it's all better than like the other solution which would be state run energy. Right. Like that's what Russia does, right. Like everything's run through Russia and like it's like one company and it's like probably organized at last, moving parts. But then it's Russia, it's Russia. I mean, it is it's I think it's I think it's better.
00;41;59;01 - 00;42;19;22
Unknown
But, you know, I've made my career on, on these types of deals and here I like it here. Oh, right. Right. Like I'm just assuming it's like the state run thing. Is it the best way. But is there like a middle ground like should the government be involved. Well, I mean, so there's state owned, owned oil companies like in the Middle East or, you know, places like that.
00;42;19;22 - 00;42;45;08
Unknown
But I don't know that that necessarily translate down to state owned electricity. It probably does in a place like Russia. I don't I don't know, I think Australia has competitive energy markets like for electricity similar to what we do. But yeah, I mean, as far as I guess the question that this kind of calls back to which I don't have an answer for, I haven't done a deep dive on it or thought about it, but it's didn't.
00;42;45;10 - 00;43;14;05
Unknown
Did we actually do a good thing by deregulating the electricity market in Texas or not? Has it stimulated competition to keep prices down, or is it just everybody just tacking things on and we're actually paying more? I read different things about that, over the years. But but ultimately I think that there especially if you're using somebody like energy O'Gara or you're doing the research on your own things, you can actually find the deals where you're paying less.
00;43;14;07 - 00;43;46;23
Unknown
So I don't know. Is it better to be? I think a free market, competitive market is good, but the market isn't completely free. And competitive. You know, not that I think I think having the utilities, which that's not free or competitive, it's a government utility that's doing the power lines and the natural gas that we have, having that, infrastructure there and the oversight and everything that goes into that is probably a really good thing, because when you're electricity goes out, you don't have to figure out who to call like it's one person.
00;43;46;27 - 00;44;10;25
Unknown
It's kind of a very necessary thing. So I don't know. It's I don't know where I sit on the competitive energy thing. I think that you can get ahead if you do your research. Had to hit you with the psychological stuff at the end there. I mean, just like most things, the free market, the free country, America, baby, you know, like, that's the way, it's usually the right way to go.
00;44;10;25 - 00;44;31;13
Unknown
We usually do things pretty good over here, I think. So, okay, let's, let's end it with, I guess rapid fire questions I've never done here before, but I just basically want to get some ideas or tips. About getting that goddamn electricity bill down so you can answer them based off just personal experience, professional experience, whatever.
00;44;31;20 - 00;44;51;14
Unknown
And, let's see if we can, like, figure out some of this stuff out. Okay. So, well, basically there's some generic stuff like the bills are higher in the summer and the bills are lower in the winter. And that's because the AC. Right. Like right. Yes. And like so I use TXU and it says, it says where my mix is going and it's literally like 95% AC and then like even like lights.
00;44;51;14 - 00;45;11;26
Unknown
Something about these shit, like lights are super efficient and like, don't even take anything. And like unplugging stuff from the wall doesn't even seem to really matter. It does. I mean, it just kind of depends. Unplugging stuff definitely matters. It all adds up. Using the eco thing like your water heater, believe it or not, has a big impact on it.
00;45;11;26 - 00;45;30;08
Unknown
Your washer and dryer using eco friendly settings. That does totally matter. Turning your lights off does matter. All of these little habits can build up over time. Making sure that you have, all of your windows, your ceiling is good on your house is another thing you can. But insulation to break this is actually that these little things I want to break down.
00;45;30;08 - 00;45;51;19
Unknown
So, like, if we're talking like appliances, like fridge or dishwasher and stuff like that, like, they have eco modes usually. That's usually like an actual good way to go. What do you think? What are the machines actually doing to be more eco friendly, like they're not using as much, natural gas in the heating portion of their cycles.
00;45;51;25 - 00;46;12;02
Unknown
And, how does that natural gas? Because you pay for I mean, well, sorry, you pay a gas bill to heat your water in Texas. At least you do. So let me walk that back. Yeah. Because, I have a gas dryer. If you don't have a gas dryer, it's it's going to pull more electricity to make it hotter.
00;46;12;02 - 00;46;29;11
Unknown
And by the way, gas dryers literally have, fire in them because I had to fix it one time. Oh, really? Dad taught me. And they pulled out the bottom, and there's literally a flame. And then it lights, coils, and then the coils get hot and heat. And that's how gas dryers work. So there's like an actual, like fire or something that's like making the coils hot, which is.
00;46;29;17 - 00;46;50;03
Unknown
Yeah, but now we have electric dryers that don't do that. And I don't know, that's and we all know like when you like a heater, like electric things, you plug in like heaters are like super inefficient. Right. So right I don't yeah. Sorry I continue no no I don't I that's, that's all I got. And then like, like refrigerators, like, they like, they're not like always running 100%.
00;46;50;03 - 00;47;07;28
Unknown
They like, they idle, right. I mean, I guess, I don't know, I gotta go back. It seems like they'd have to constantly be doing one part of it. I don't remember. I was like, why? I didn't see it in, like, on my mix, you know, it's telling me if it's accurate. It's like the appliances really don't suck that much either.
00;47;07;28 - 00;47;35;17
Unknown
So they don't totally. I mean, but the only reason they can tell your Max, like, my guess would be, I was actually listening to this. True crime episode, which was so interesting. And it's it was real. They found basically who the killer was because the question was all like, well, who washed the clothes? And they could tell from their electricity usage what time the dryer came on, because it all do like a little pop in your usage.
00;47;35;17 - 00;47;55;07
Unknown
And they could they could pin the person at the house washing the clothes because of that change in electricity. So on the bigger appliances you're going to see, the blips in the usage. We, have smart meter taxes here, which it's, a data repository of your electricity usage every five minutes of every day for everybody. It's pretty cool.
00;47;55;07 - 00;48;13;03
Unknown
So they can see and look at your usage patterns and see those types of things. But for the smaller appliances, it's not going to be able to tell you whether you unplugged or plugged something in. What's just going to happen is an overall gradual reduction by by unplugging it. Yeah. Unless you can plug everything at once. Yeah.
00;48;13;04 - 00;48;32;09
Unknown
I bought a, I bought a battery. Generator. And it's really cool because when you plug things in, it tells you how many watts you're using. And so, like, I could plug in a TV and turn it on and I'll say, like, 30W or whatever. And then, if I turn it off, it might say like two, right?
00;48;32;09 - 00;48;47;23
Unknown
So it's like ideally used to power being plugged in. So I love I love having the idea of like it'd be so cool. I'm sure they exist, I guess, but like a little it's a little handheld thing you can hold and just like, plug shit in and be like, oh, like, wow, this is drawing so much. Or like, you'd have to, like, be able to plug in something like a dishwasher.
00;48;47;23 - 00;49;08;27
Unknown
You'd be like, well, let's see how much this uses. And like, let's compare models and like, and they're like YouTubers. I make videos often shit like this. And like there are, there are two things. I have something installed in my house that I don't use because it didn't work very well, but it's basically this coil that goes around all of your electricity box, and it's supposed to be able to tell you like what's using what.
00;49;08;29 - 00;49;31;09
Unknown
It's a great, very cool idea, especially if you could. And the reason I have it was, it was working at Energy Yoga. We're trying to figure out different ways to like, if we could control people's appliances. Like, could we, shift the hot water heater down to half, you know, do these different shifts and create change their pattern of energy usage?
00;49;31;11 - 00;49;52;12
Unknown
But yeah, they have things like that. The ones that I tried that are pretty old now, weren't great, but I think some of the new homes are really, really interesting. And how they have these set up, they have these smart homes now that that knows everything about your appliances. And so I'm sure that technology's come pretty far since I've used it.
00;49;52;14 - 00;50;10;03
Unknown
It's almost like a hobby. Like just like learning how shit works. Right? Like it's like people would nerd out about their cars and they can take it apart and put it back together, like, why don't we know, like, these basic things about our own, like home and things we pay for, you know? So it's not even like a need, like a it should just be something we know and like, learn in school.
00;50;10;03 - 00;50;26;09
Unknown
Like, damn, it definitely should. But I mean, at the end of the day, who's going to pay for like I guess I guess you would pay for it to know these things about your house and somebody would make money from that. But it's a very complicated problem for for that answer, I think. Yeah. A few more things.
00;50;26;09 - 00;50;49;13
Unknown
Windows you, you're about to get into, like, obviously a windows open, the sun hits it, it's beaming through it makes the window hot, it makes it hot. So like, obviously like blinds, like, are big saver, right? Yeah. Blinds. Drapes like, that's absolutely huge. Turning your, you know, adjusting your thermostat differently when you're not there. As good as long as it's gradual.
00;50;49;16 - 00;51;12;08
Unknown
Yes. Not going from like, you're sleeping at 69 at night and then you leave and you leave and it goes down up to 80, and you come home, you go back to 69, you want to trickle down. Yeah. I mean, because it takes a lot of energy to cool your house back down. Right? So, so as long as, I mean, if you're gone for an entire day, it's probably worth it to to flip it up a couple degrees or more.
00;51;12;08 - 00;51;35;24
Unknown
We do it for our daily workday at our house. And, I've noticed a difference, I think. And yeah, it, you know, depending on the day, like, it isn't too bad to like, deal with. So, yeah, I think insulation is huge. I mean, that's one thing that could make a big impact if you don't have insulation. And then weatherstripping stuff like that, like seal your like the ends of the like on your door, you know the little.
00;51;35;24 - 00;51;52;27
Unknown
Yeah. That's like thing on the bottom a little cracks so it adds up as it flows. Definitely adds up. Yeah. Wow. What else we got? Ceiling fans, they always tell you to, like, in the summer. Flip it so it spins the other way. What? How did the. You know, you ever done that actually, have you actually go out there and flip that switch?
00;51;52;28 - 00;52;13;14
Unknown
Now I hate ceiling fans. And so I know I every time they're on I turn them off. But yeah, that makes no sense to me that spinning in a different way. Maybe there's something to that, but like one of those mom myths, but they all literally have a thing on it where you can reverse the flow. It's like, I guess it's supposed to get the hot air to rise or lower.
00;52;13;14 - 00;52;36;07
Unknown
So if you want the hot air to not rise, it spins the other way. It pushes the hot air down. I guess. So, because the flaps are angled, it's more of like a winner. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty much it. The last one I have is I mentioned I live in a three story home. It's pretty crazy. So three stories and, it's, there's one AC unit in the back, which means that.
00;52;36;10 - 00;52;54;07
Unknown
Cause all three floors evenly. Right. I asked my dad, and I think he called it, like, ducking or something. So I guess some something's happening in the spaghetti in the attic where it knows how to, like, aggregate different air flows. Because I have three thermostats too, but it's all the same unit. So interesting. Yeah, it's super inefficient basically.
00;52;54;07 - 00;53;16;09
Unknown
Right. Like it'd be better to live in a one story house where it could just cool at all. Or do you use all three of your stories all the time? Not really, but I mean, that would be huge. Just shutting the doors. Shutting the doors help. Absolutely. Well, think about it. Or just when you're in a hot or cold house, like, if you want to keep something cool upstairs, you shut the door and it's going to keep everything cooler in there.
00;53;16;09 - 00;53;37;23
Unknown
But what if you close the door to one room and then the AC, it gets all in there, and then it's like nice and cold in that room, right? It's not spreading that because that's how it's not spreading. Well, I'm just saying for the rooms that you're not using, shut the door, turn the thermostat. Like if you're not using the third for the vent, keep it, keep it, keep that thermostat up there on on a different level and only turn that on, okay.
00;53;37;24 - 00;53;52;23
Unknown
You know, shut all the doors leading up to that. Like if it's the third floor, I would hope it's the third for not like the first floor or second floor you don't use. But yeah, whatever that floor is. And if you can seal it off and keep that at a different temperature, that should help a lot too.
00;53;52;25 - 00;54;12;07
Unknown
Lot to learn today. Okay. Well I'm gonna, I'm going to pray that by next July I get under 500 hopefully 400, maybe 300. I think you should sign up for the Energy Ogre and it'll, it'll project like it'll be huge, I think. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like it would be a good move for you.
00;54;12;09 - 00;54;44;26
Unknown
Yeah. I'm just over here spiraling. I just do it like you should do it when we're dying. It takes. It's so quick to sign up. Yeah, it's it's so easy. Just give them the information. Definitely sign up for auto pay, too, and just be done with it. Okay. As auto pay, do you you work. That's what you did on that side on, like the tech side are you worked with like, did you work with, like, auto pay and like, it's like, besides, like it being easy for the customer to just set it and forget it or like, what does the company think about auto pay?
00;54;44;28 - 00;55;07;04
Unknown
I mean, auto pay. Well, I mean, it's it's one service that we offer, right? Like, let's just say somebody always auto pays their bill. They don't want to go and if you're that person it and you're not handling it through Energy Ogre, it's much easier for us to do the auto pay and everything for you. When we do the enrollments, etc. but it's also an extra thing to do.
00;55;07;05 - 00;55;26;23
Unknown
You can not do auto pay. I just like it because it's it's less for me to do. I don't even I haven't seen I don't look at any of my electricity bills. I just I see the charges coming through. Some people give you discounts for auto paying. Yeah it's great. So that's all legit. No matter. Like not even talking about energy.
00;55;26;26 - 00;55;43;04
Unknown
It's like any company basically autopay giving you discounts usually like safe and a good way to go if you can I think so, I mean, if you can and you're not worried about like, oh, I need to wait another week. Well, I think the other thing with energy is that my bill dropped. So much and was like less unpredictable.
00;55;43;05 - 00;56;09;01
Unknown
I mean, it's still higher in the summer and lower in the winter, but it was less unpredictable. So it got to a number that wasn't so scary when it came out. Okay. All right. Well, we learned a lot today. Close your windows, sign up for autopay, and, just try and think about stuff. Don't be me. And, just pay your energy overlords, you know, put in some goddamn effort and, save some money.
00;56;09;03 - 00;56;14;02
Unknown
Save some money. Make it easy. Hit the easy button. All right, Renee, thanks for coming on. All right. Thanks.
