"Competition" proponents worked hard to destroy real competition
Please disregard this post unless you want to read a long attempted explanation of why Texas electric restructuring has gone badly. [a better explanation would be much longer]
You probably know by now that (almost all of) the folks at the Public Utility Commission of Texas drink the "competition is wonderful" kool-aid, so you can't expect to get any real help from them.
I was right to be hesitant, because I forgot to mention quite a few things. (And despite the length of this post, I'm still leaving out a ton of other relevant considerations.)
Sorry again to not actually offer anything helpful here (in a practical or immediate way).
Glad to see (in another thread) that you're trying an attic radiant barrier.
Some folks are happy with having added ridge vents - apparently more effective, but also costlier, so consider the payback period.
Good luck again on making the tough choice whether to go month-to-month or medium/long-term contract. As you've learned, many retailers have guessed wrongly (and/or managed risk badly) and have gone bankrupt and/or out of business. Many customers then get shifted to a Provider of Last Resort (POLR), which charges far higher rates. (The POLRs very cleverly persuaded the PUC to effectively require the POLRs to charge above-market rates. I can recall several years ago that the POLR for San Angelo was charging 24 c/kwh while we were paying ~9 c/kwh in Austin.)
Also, several disreputable retailers have tried to escape their long-term contracts with customers after prices went up - some of them simply raised prices (unlawfully), some outrageously re-interpreted a contract clause as a loophole to justify raising prices, and some dumped their low-price-contract customers onto other retailers, which then claimed a (nonexistent) right to slap on a big surcharge. [Ultimately, the PUC sorta disapproved of that last sort of customer-dumping ... long after some PUC staff had approved it.]
And here's to a major point that I meant to mention re "competition is wonderful" ... I was (and am) a big fan of competition in general, but over time it became clear that the Texas legislature and the PUC were/are big fans of the word/slogan "competition" but actually big opponents of competition in practice. The only entities in Texas in the 90s asking for retail electric competition were the alternative wholesale generators and traders/speculators (e.g., Enron), some large industrial consumers, and a few political economists/regulators, while the utilities and commercial and residential customers were very strongly opposed. (Upon further reflection and review of legislative materials: Enron was an essential driver [prime mover, some might say] of Texas electric restructuring. I don't recall a single non-"astroturf" residential customer asking for it.)
So ... we should not have been surprised that the resulting laws, rules, and PUC decisions very strongly favored generators, traders, and some large industrial consumers. The transmission and distribution utilities have pretty much been made whole (with some big ups and some big downs), while a huge price has been paid by commercial and [-]industrial[/-] residential (especially residential) consumers. [A few large generators, traders, and industrial customers also did badly, but mostly due to incompetence, greed, and/or fraud.] Legislators and regulators have perhaps not destroyed as much customer and shareholder wealth as they did during the telecom restructuring debacle [which the incumbent Bell companies overwhelmingly "won" regulatorily], but the damage has still been real and significant.
Just to give one small hint of an idea as to how the PUC is actually very strongly anti-competition, consider this: the PUC chairman has said in public that he expects and hopes that most retailers will disappear (merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution) and that only 2 or 3 or 4 will survive (for the whole state!!!). [There are tons of other examples, too: [mis-]interpreting their own rule to require one-way price increases [as natural gas prices rose] but to forbid price decreases [back when natural gas prices declined]; [mis-]interpreting laws and rules to require a wholesale pricing mechanism that allows all generators to make stratospheric profits during certain peak and off-peak hours or just whenever a large generator wants to control prices [apparently, as long as they don't do so too often]; etc., etc.]
{meanwhile, the PUC chairman happily asked for and accepted an enormous rebate from Austin Energy for a solar photovoltaic solar cell installation [45-75% of cost, available to all qualified customers with the upfront money and the right kind/location of roof], so his residential electric bill is a microscopic fraction of what he has helped foist on folks in "customer choice" areas.}
What I'm trying to say is that, although plenty of happy "competition" words spill forth, restructuring has been implemented in an extremely anti-competitive manner. I'm still a big fan of [true] competition and of the many small and medium sized businesses that want to make their money the honest way, but ... they don't have much of a chance in this "market."
The unfortunate reality is that Texas electric restructuring has been entirely for the benefit of a very small number of very large corporations whose officers just happened to broadly distribute campaign contributions. The return on investment on those campaign contributions has been enormous, just as the cost to most electric customers has been.
