CenterPoint Energy, which is headquartered in downtown Houston, serves approximately 2.8 to 2.9 million customers in the greater Houston area. (Ivelin Denev/Shutterstock)
The last thing most Houston residents want to hear is that an already potentially high electric bill could be even higher.
However, a twice-yearly adjustment from CenterPoint Energy took effect Sept. 1, with charges increasing by 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. This resulted in rates going from 4.4393 to 5.7889 cents per kWh, with households that use on average 1,000 kWh seeing about an extra $13.5 on their electricity bill.
CenterPoint Energy, which is headquartered in downtown Houston, serves approximately 2.8 to 2.9 million customers in the greater Houston area, and also services Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Mississippi.
“This annual adjustment is designed to accommodate cooler weather and help maintain more stable, predictable rates throughout the fall and winter months,” a CenterPoint spokesperson told Houston Public Media. “Conversely, CenterPoint implements a rate decrease each year on March 1 in preparation for warmer weather, aligning seasonal pricing with anticipated energy usage patterns.”
Along with the rate change, there has been ongoing concern and discussion about how generative AI can impact residential electricity prices.
“And I think there’s a chance that AI is going to drive our bills even higher in the future. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is that these facilities are using so much energy that utilities are building billions of dollars of infrastructure to support them and spreading those costs to all of us,” Ari Peskoe, Electricity Law Initiative Director at Harvard Law School, told PBS. “And the second reason is that there are energy markets where utilities buy their power. And because demand from these AI energy centers is booming, it’s driving up prices, and we’re all paying those higher prices.”
Houston in particular has started to become a rising hub for AI centers, with Apple set to open a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility next year in the city. The facility will support the manufacturing of servers that support Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI software system.
