How much can a Houston Metro food service facility save on energy?

For a food service site running 50,000-200,000 kWh/month at prevailing ERCOT commercial rates near 8.2¢/kWh, a blended 29% reduction is roughly $14,268 a year. That is an illustrative figure from typical usage, not a quote — the real number comes out of your interval data and your position on CenterPoint Energy's rate schedules.

Why does the Houston Metro market matter for food service operations specifically?

Food service facilities run a meal period peaks with constant refrigeration baseload load of about 50,000-200,000 kWh/month. In ERCOT Houston load zone, that shape determines your capacity obligation and your exposure to demand charges — both set by behaviour during a small number of peak hours rather than by total consumption. Two food service sites with identical annual usage can pay materially different amounts here purely on load shape.

How do you buy electricity for a food service facility in Houston Metro?

Houston Metro is CenterPoint Energy territory inside ERCOT Houston load zone. CenterPoint delivers the power and maintains the wires whoever supplies it, so competitive supply carries no reliability consequence — only a lower price.

What rate schedule fits a food service facility on CenterPoint?

Most food service sites at 50,000-200,000 kWh/month land on Secondary Service Greater Than 10 kW or above, but service voltage and billed demand decide it, not sector. We verify the classification against the bill before recommending anything, because a schedule change costs nothing and sometimes outperforms a supply contract.

Do you work with food service businesses across the whole Houston Metro?

Yes — the full CenterPoint Energy territory, covering Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria, Galveston Counties. Deep ERCOT market expertise with dedicated Texas-based procurement specialists.

Food Service Energy in Houston Metro

ERCOT Houston · CenterPoint

Food Service Load in Houston Metro

CenterPoint Energy delivers power across the Houston metro and maintains the poles and wires, but it does not sell the electricity — that comes from a competitive retail supplier you choose. The Houston load zone prices separately from the rest of ERCOT, and it runs hot: coastal humidity keeps summer cooling load high well into the evening, and the zone carries heavy industrial demand from the ship channel that shifts settlement prices in ways the North zone never sees. For a commercial buyer this is the most liquid retail market in the country, with dozens of suppliers competing for load of almost any size.

Food Service is not the dominant sector in this territory, where refining, petrochemicals, port logistics, medical campuses and a very large office base carry most of the commercial load. That is an advantage worth using: a food service load is unfamiliar enough locally that it is routinely priced off generic assumptions rather than off your actual usage. A meal period peaks with constant refrigeration baseload profile at 50,000-200,000 kWh/month is the specific thing we take to market, and the contract structure follows from it: fixed, indexed, or block-and-index, sized to your actual baseload rather than to a nameplate figure.

Rate Schedules

Where Food Service Load Sits on CenterPoint

At 50,000-200,000 kWh/month, most food service sites are demand-metered — which means the schedule, not just the rate, drives the bill.

Commercial rate schedules you will typically see on a CenterPoint Energy bill
Schedule	Typically covers
Secondary Service Less Than 10 kW	small storefronts and offices
Secondary Service Greater Than 10 kW	most mid-size commercial accounts
Primary Service	facilities taking power at distribution primary voltage
Transmission Service	large industrial sites metered at transmission voltage

Schedule names, demand thresholds and eligibility rules change with each rate case, and the schedule an account was originally placed on is frequently no longer the one that fits it. We verify yours against the actual bill rather than assuming — that check is free, and it is where a meaningful share of the savings on this page comes from.

Full-Service Energy Management

Food Service Energy Services in Houston Metro

Every service below is scoped to food service restaurants, commercial kitchens, food processing, quick service restaurants on CenterPoint Energy. Start where you want to cut cost first.

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