Energyrates.ca strives to provide Albertans with as much information as possible about competitive energy rates and prices for electricity and natural gas. But we certainly aren’t the only educational resource out there–there are a number of truly excellent, bias-free sources of information. Today we wanted to take a moment to highlight one of the best: The Utilities Consumer Advocate’s UCA Helps website.
What is the Utilities Consumer Advocate?
The UCA was created in 2003 in the wake of the deregulation of Alberta’s natural gas and electricity markets to ensure that the public had a voice in matters regarding energy industry. The goal of the UCA is to make sure that utility companies have profits that are reasonable and don’t come at undue expense to consumers, and to provide consumers with the information they need to make informed choices.
The UCA created the UCA Helps website to serve as an accessible source of information on the utilities options available to consumers.
UCA Helps has a number of features that make it truly indispensable to any residential or business consumer who wants to research the regulated and retail energy options available in their area. However, as is always the case when there is a lot of data on offer, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and overlook many of the resources available on the site. So we took some time to comb through the site in order to find some of the most usual features that you don’t want to miss. Here are just a few of them:
#1: A search tool for finding all the retailers and regulated utilities available in your area.
The organization may leave something to be desired, but UCA Help’s Retailer Search Tool is pretty powerful. You can either do a search for your city, or select from an alphabetical list, in order to track down the current regulated and retail rates for your area. You can also filter the results to show only electricity rates, only natural gas rates, or both.
As you can see, the information provided by the search tool is pretty comprehensive. In the case of Calgary, you can find information 2 regulated retailers and about 30 regulated retailers that offer services in the area. If you hit the [+] to the left of each entry, the listing will expand to show all of the retailer’s available service plans, their price per kWh or GJ, admin fees, and any applicable fees or fines for early cancellation. Placing your mouse pointer over one of the plan names will pop up additional information, and if you click on a company name, you’ll be taken to a UCA page that gives an overview of the company, as well as contact information.
#2. Data on the historical regulated and retail rates in locations throughout Alberta, going back to 2002.
The other data mine accessible through the search tool page we were just looking at is easy to overlook, because it’s shunted off to the left-hand side. To access this info, click on one of the years listed in the sidebar. When you select one, you’ll be presented with a list of PDFs which feature all of the electricity and gas rates in the area on various dates throughout the year in question.
If you’re only interested in the regulated rates, you can skip the PDFs and scroll farther down, where the page will present you with a pair of tables of regulated rates for that year. The first table gives the regulated rate for electricity on the first of each month, for 4 regulated providers in Alberta:
- EPCOR in Edmonton
- EPCOR via Fortis
- ENMAX in Calgary
- DERS via ATCO Electric
A little further down is a similar table for regulated natural gas rates from three providers:
- DERS North
- DERS South
- AltaGas
#3: Interactive guides to understanding your electricity and natural gas bills.
Energy bills can be pretty difficult to make heads or tails of, due to being crammed full of confusing ID numbers, fees for various services, and other details. UCA Helps has guides for understanding both natural gas and electricity bills. When you hover over any text that is highlighted in blue, popups will appear which explain what each term means. Some of the terms explained include “Site ID,” “Administration charges,” “Cancel/rebill,” “rate riders,” and more. So if you find yourself flustered by the avalanche of jargon on your energy bill, these pages can be extremely helpful.
#4. Detailed background information, contact info, website links, and energy rates for just about every energy provider in Alberta.
If you click on the “Energy Options” tab, you’ll be taken to a rather unassuming page that briefly explains the fact that consumers have the right to choose between regulated and retail energy services. However, what you really want is the info in the column on the left-hand side.
Clicking on any of the menu options will either present you with an expandable list of all the companies within that particular category, each of which can be clicked to pull up basic company information, phone numbers, email addresses, current energy rates, and links to the company’s website. You can find a lot of information on regulated rate companies, retail providers, green energy companies, wires service providers, and more.
