McKinney TX Electricity Plans: Real Cost at 500 and 2,000 kWh
If you live in McKinney and you are shopping, renewing, or starting electric service, the headline rate on a plan card is not the whole story. The useful question is what you actually pay when your meter moves about 500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in a light month and about 2,000 kWh when air conditioning is pulling hard. Those two ladders expose fixed fees, minimum-usage traps, and delivery charges that a single “teaser” cents-per-kWh number can hide.
Texas gives many North Texas households a retail choice that many states still do not. The tradeoff is homework: you pick a retail electric provider (REP), while a separate wires company delivers the electrons. This article walks through how that split bill works, what statewide price benchmarks imply at 500 and 2,000 kWh, and how to compare offers without getting surprised when summer usage spikes.
McKinney sits in Texas’ competitive power market
McKinney customers who are not behind a municipal utility or co-op generally participate in Texas’ competitive retail market. The grid operator for about 90 percent of Texas electric load is the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which says it manages power for 27 million customers, settles the wholesale market, and administers retail switching for nearly 8 million premises in competitive areas (¹). ERCOT is overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Legislature (¹).
In practice you do not “buy power from ERCOT” the way you buy from a brand on a store shelf. You contract with an REP for the energy product. The local transmission and distribution utility (TDU, sometimes called the TDSP) owns the poles, wires, and meter. For a large share of North Texas addresses in competitive areas, that wires company is Oncor Electric Delivery—confirm your own address when you shop by ZIP. Oncor itself tells residential customers that new competitive-area service starts through the state’s shopping site, ² (³).
² is the PUCT’s official, unbiased electric choice website. Providers can list offers there for free, and shoppers compare plans after entering a ZIP code (²). If a ZIP is not in a competitive area, the site will say so. Always start with your ZIP—not a citywide assumption—because service territory can change block to block.
Your bill is two businesses stapled together
Oncor publishes a plain-language reminder that matters every month: Oncor does not generate power and does not bill you directly. You buy electricity from your REP and receive the bill from that REP. Oncor charges the REP for delivery; the REP passes those charges through (⁴).
Oncor’s January 2024 explainer broke residential delivery into two pieces: a fixed monthly amount of $4.23, plus a volumetric delivery charge of roughly 5 cents per kWh delivered (⁴). Those figures can change when tariffs change, and REPs may label the pass-through differently (often as an “Oncor TDU Delivery Charge”). The structure still explains why a “cheap” energy rate cannot erase delivery: some of the monthly total is wiring, metering, and delivery recovery, not the REP’s quoted energy price.
That is why two McKinney neighbors on different REPs still share a delivery backbone. Shopping wisely changes the REP slice; efficiency and weather change the kWh slice that multiplies both energy and volumetric delivery.
What “average” Texas electricity costs look like
Statewide averages will not match your Fact Sheet line-for-line, but they keep offers honest.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2024 residential average monthly bill table shows Texas households used about 1,096 kWh per month at 14.94 cents/kWh, for an average bill of $163.72. The U.S. residential average that year was lower usage (863 kWh) at a higher price (16.48 cents/kWh), for a $142.26 average bill (⁵). In other words, Texas homes tend to run the meter harder than the national average—especially where summers are long—even when the average cents-per-kWh is not the highest in the country.
Zooming out from the residential class only, EIA’s Texas electricity profile for 2024 reports an all-sector average retail price of 9.79 cents/kWh (rank 42 among states) (⁶). That blended figure includes commercial and industrial customers, so it will look lower than what you see on a home bill. Treat it as market context, not your Plan B.
Prices also move. EIA’s Electric Power Monthly showed Texas residential average price at 16.99 cents/kWh in April 2026, versus 15.52 cents/kWh in April 2025 (⁷). Nationally, EIA reports the 2025 annual average residential price around 17.30 cents/kWh (⁸). If a McKinney offer’s all-in average at your real usage sits far above recent residential averages without a clear premium (prepaid convenience, 100% renewable, very short term), slow down and read the Fact Sheet.
Real-cost math at 500 kWh
Five hundred kWh is a lean residential month in North Texas—more plausible for a small home, a mild shoulder season, heavy vacancy, or unusually disciplined AC use. It is also the usage tier where fixed charges hurt most, because that flat dollars-per-month amount is spread over fewer kilowatt-hours.
Using Texas’s 2024 average residential price of 14.94 ¢/kWh as a benchmark (not a McKinney offer), an all-in cost near that average would look like:
500 × $0.1494 ≈ $74.70 for the month (⁵).
If you instead apply the April 2026 statewide residential average of 16.99 ¢/kWh, the same 500 kWh is about:
500 × $0.1699 ≈ $84.95 (⁷).
Now isolate delivery using Oncor’s published structural example ($4.23 fixed + about 5¢/kWh). At 500 kWh:
Delivery ≈ $4.23 + (500 × $0.05) = $29.23 (⁴).
Against an ~$75–$85 all-in style monthly total, delivery is roughly a third or more of the bill before you even argue about the REP’s energy margin. That is the physics of low usage: wires costs do not shrink as fast as your thermostat fantasies.
Power to Choose’s own user guide tells shoppers to calculate estimated average monthly usage from past bills, remember seasonal swings (it flags months like August and February), and filter out plans with minimum usage fees/credits and tiered rates if those features do not fit (⁹). At 500 kWh, that filter is not optional trivia—minimum-usage fees are designed to claw back revenue when you do not burn enough kWh for the teaser rate to apply.
Worked illustration (labeled as math, not a live offer): suppose a plan advertised “10¢/kWh” but also charged a $9.95 base fee and a $15 minimum-usage fee below 1,000 kWh. At 500 kWh, energy-like charges could jump from a naive $50 to roughly $50 + $9.95 + $15 = $74.95 before delivery pass-through—already near 15 ¢/kWh effective on the REP side alone. The Fact Sheet, not the banner rate, is where those terms live (⁹).
Real-cost math at 2,000 kWh
Two thousand kWh is a heavy, but not mythical, North Texas summer month for a larger all-electric or poorly shaded home with the AC running. It sits well above Texas’s 1,096 kWh 2024 average (⁵), so it is the stress test for your plan—and for your house shell.
At the 2024 Texas residential average price:
2,000 × $0.1494 ≈ $298.80 (⁵).
At the April 2026 statewide residential average:
2,000 × $0.1699 ≈ $339.80 (⁷).
Delivery under the same Oncor structural example:
Delivery ≈ $4.23 + (2,000 × $0.05) = $104.23 (⁴).
Delivery is larger in dollars than at 500 kWh, but it is a smaller share of a ~$300–$340 bill. The swing dollars now live mostly in the REP energy charge and in how many kWh you actually use. That is why a plan that looks mediocre at 500 kWh—because of base fees—can look competitive at 2,000 kWh, and why the reverse is also true for bill-credit products that assume a usage pattern you may not have.
Every tenth of a cent matters more when the meter is hot. A 0.5 ¢/kWh difference at 2,000 kWh is about $10 per month (2,000 × $0.005), or roughly $120 over a year of similar months. At 500 kWh, that same half-cent is only about $2.50 a month. High-usage McKinney summers reward boring, clean fixed rates more than gadgetry.
Why the same plan shows different ¢/kWh at 500 vs 2,000
Texas retail shopping culture trains you to look at average price displays at multiple usage levels. Even when marketing flattens the story to one bold number, the Fact Sheet and plan math almost always reprice when usage changes, because bills combine:
- Fixed monthly fees (REP base charges and TDU customer charges) that fall on a ¢/kWh basis as usage rises.
- Volumetric energy and delivery that scale with kWh.
- Usage-contingent features—minimum usage fees, bill credits that unlock only in a band, or tiers—that the PUCT shopping guide explicitly lets you filter (⁹).
If a plan’s average price at 500 kWh is much worse than at 2,000 kWh, you are usually looking at fixed-cost amortization or a low-usage penalty. If 2,000 kWh looks worse than 1,000 kWh, look for tiers, disappearing credits, or time-of-use rules you did not model.
National context helps explain why Collin County meters climb. EIA finds the average U.S. household uses about 10,500 kWh of electricity per year (~875 kWh/month), with wide regional spreads, and that air conditioning alone was about 19% of residential site electricity in 2020; about 89% of homes used AC (¹⁰). McKinney’s climate makes that AC share a budget line, not a footnote.
How to shop McKinney plans without fooling yourself
Use the official path. Enter your ZIP on ², narrow by term length, and decide whether you want a fixed rate (term longer than one month) or a variable rate that can move monthly—Power to Choose notes fixed products can be helpful when wholesale prices spike in high summer or deep winter (⁹).
Then ignore your ego and pull last year’s kWh from bills or Smart Meter Texas data if you have access. Average the months that look like your life, but also check the hottest months separately. The User Guide’s point about August/February seasonality is the difference between a plan that “won” on a 1,000 kWh brochure and a plan that survives a 2,000 kWh August (⁹).
Before you enroll, open the Fact Sheet for the specific product. Power to Choose calls that step critical (⁹). Confirm early termination fees, base charges, credit entitlements, renewable content, and whether the average prices you compared already include TDU delivery for your territory. Oncor-territory shoppers should expect a delivery pass-through even when the REP markets a single bundled average (⁴).
Watch satisfaction signals and contracts. Power to Choose surfaces complaint-based customer satisfaction information tied to PUCT complaints (⁹). A rock-bottom rate from a high-friction REP can cost more in time than it saves in cents.
Finally, treat payment scare-tactics as a separate risk class. Oncor states it will not bill customers directly and urges people not to pay anyone claiming to collect for Oncor; it also says Oncor will not contact you by phone, text, or in person to demand payment or threaten disconnection (⁴). The Federal Trade Commission’s scam basics rhyme with that advice: impersonators pressure you to act immediately and push odd payment methods; slow down, verify with a number you look up yourself, and never pay a stranger with gift cards or irreversible transfers (¹¹).
After the plan: the kWh you can still control
Contract shopping sets the unit price. The other half of “real cost” is whether 500 kWh or 2,000 kWh is even the right expectation for your house.
EIA’s end-use breakdown shows why envelope and cooling upgrades punch above their weight in Texas summers: air conditioning is a top electricity end use nationally, and cooling loads dominate where heating is mild (¹⁰). ENERGY STAR’s home guidance is blunt in a useful way—efficient products and home improvements can cut bills while improving comfort (¹²). Thermostat setpoints, filtration, attic insulation, shading, and sealing leaky ducts will not show up on a Power to Choose card, but they show up on the meter that multiplies every rate you just negotiated.
Generation mix is changing around you even if your REP product is a simple fixed block. EIA has noted Texas’s outsized wind fleet in national generation trends (¹³), and Texas energy policy and infrastructure debates continue in public reporting (¹⁴). Those macro stories explain wholesale volatility over years; they do not replace reading next month’s Fact Sheet.
Bottom line for McKinney shoppers
Price your life at two meters, not one marketing number. At 500 kWh, fixed fees and minimum-usage terms can dominate, and delivery alone can land near $29 under Oncor’s published structural example (⁴). At 2,000 kWh, statewide residential averages imply rough totals near $300–$340 depending on whether you anchor to 2024 annual or recent monthly averages (⁵; ⁷), and a fraction of a cent on the REP rate starts to outrun small bill credits.
Shop ² with your ZIP, filter features you do not want, and read the Fact Sheet before you click enroll (⁹). Then compare the all-in dollars—not the slogan—at the kWh levels your McKinney home actually runs.