TXU will put it in writing: 50% off your electricity in August. Half price, in the one month your air conditioner never stops.
Run that against everything you know about retail. Grocery stores don’t run steak specials on the Fourth of July. No company halves its price during its busiest season — unless the rest of the calendar pays it back.
That’s the TXU Season Pass, and the rest of the calendar is exactly where the money lives. We pulled the plan’s pricing sheets and the fine print behind TXU’s savings claim. Here’s what the discount actually costs.
What Season Pass actually does
Season Pass is a 12-month fixed-rate plan that discounts your energy charge — the per-unit price of the power itself — on a seasonal schedule. On the current version, marketed as the Ultimate Season Pass, the calendar looks like this as of August 2026, per TXU’s own plan page:
- 50% off in January, February, July, and August
- 25% off in March, June, September, and December
- No discount in April, May, October, and November
Two things never get discounted, ever, per the same plan page: the $9.95 monthly base charge, and your delivery fees — the wire-and-meter charges everyone in your area pays no matter which company sells them power. The discount touches one line of your bill, four months a year at full strength.
None of this is hidden. It’s all on the pricing fact sheet (the EFL). It’s just not on the billboard.
The eight months that pay for the four
Here’s the math, with round numbers to keep it honest. Say the plan’s list energy charge is 20¢ per kilowatt-hour, and pretend your usage is flat all year.
Four months at half off is 10¢, four at 25% off is 15¢, and four at full freight is 20¢. Average it out and your “50% off” plan charges 15¢ — a 25% discount, off a list price TXU set itself.
Usage shape changes the math — but not the trick. Same 20¢ list price, two homes, both invented for the illustration:
| The home (hypothetical) | Effective energy rate | Real discount off the 20¢ list |
|---|---|---|
| Flat usage: 1,000 kWh every month | 15¢ | 25% |
| Big seasonal swing: 2,000 kWh in each 50% month, 1,000 in each 25% month, 500 in the rest | 12.9¢ | 36% |
The swing home does better. Neither home gets 50%. And the list price underneath is doing the heavy lifting: TXU rarely wins on price — their plans run 15-25% above budget companies for identical power on the same wires, roughly $200-$400 a year against companies like Gexa or Frontier.
So the discount isn’t a gift. It’s a rebate on an overcharge — your own money, routed through spring and fall, handed back to you in August with a bow on it.
The price with every discount already counted
Here’s the number under all the percentages: the Ultimate Season Pass 12 average price per kilowatt-hour, every seasonal discount already counted, per plan listings checked August 6, 2026.
| Area | 500 kWh | 1,000 kWh | 2,000 kWh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas–Fort Worth (Oncor) | 20.0¢ | 18.6¢ | 17.9¢ |
| Houston (CenterPoint) | 19.1¢ | 17.6¢ | 16.9¢ |
| Corpus Christi (AEP Central) | 19.9¢ | 18.6¢ | 17.9¢ |
| Abilene (AEP North) | 20.9¢ | 19.6¢ | 18.9¢ |
| Midland (TNMP) | 21.2¢ | 19.4¢ | 18.5¢ |
Ignore the 50%. The number that decides this plan is 17.6¢ to 18.6¢ per kilowatt-hour — the Ultimate Season Pass average at typical usage in Houston and Dallas with every discount included, per August 6, 2026 listings. Any plain fixed-rate plan priced below that beats it for a steady-usage home. Plain 12-month plans from budget companies routinely run several cents below it.
This is also the 30-second test that works on any plan with a percentage in the ad. Open the pricing fact sheet (the EFL) and find the average price at 1,000 kWh. That one number already contains every discount, spread across a year of typical usage — TXU did the seasonal math for you, because the EFL is where the state makes them show their work. Put it next to a plain plan’s number and you’re done. One honest caveat: the EFL average assumes a typical usage shape, so a true two-hump home lands somewhat below the printed figure — that case gets its own section below.
About that “$450 a year” claim
TXU’s plan page says it plainly: “Save $450 a Year on Avg.” Then the fine print says how they got the number, and it’s worth quoting in full:
“$450 savings based on an average of self-reported savings during discounted months from a 2024 survey of satisfied customers on Season Pass. Individual results may vary based on plan and usage.”
Three qualifiers are holding up that headline, and each one deserves a slow look:
Self-reported. Nobody audited a bill. Customers guessed what they saved.
Satisfied customers. TXU surveyed the people who liked the plan. The customers who watched their April bill jump and left aren’t in the average.
During discounted months. Saved compared to what? Their own undiscounted months — on a plan built to make exactly that gap.
A plan that raises your April rate and halves your August rate will “save” you money in August by definition. That’s not savings. That’s the trick working.
The honest number is on the pricing fact sheet: the average price per kilowatt-hour at your usage level, after all discounts — the same numbers in the table above. A survey can’t argue with a rate card.
The sequel discounts less than the original
Worth noticing: the Season Pass family has been quietly renegotiated. The original Season Pass 12 gave you 50% off for six months — June through August, December through February.
The Ultimate Season Pass — the one with “Ultimate” in the name — cuts the 50% months to four. June and December got demoted to 25%, and March and September got added at 25% as a consolation prize. More months touched by a discount; fewer months that matter deeply discounted.
That’s the giveaway. When a company fine-tunes which weeks of the year its generosity applies to, it’s not guessing. It knows your usage curve better than you do, and it’s shaping the discount to cost as little as possible.
The family keeps growing, too. The Ultimate Summer Pass concentrates everything on summer — discounted energy charges June through September, plus your three hottest days free each month — and listed around 22.5¢ per kilowatt-hour at typical usage in Dallas as of late July 2026. A steeper show, funded the same way.
TXU runs this play across the catalog: Free Pass, where your 7 “free” days are picked after the fact — and priced in before you sign; Smart Edge, where a $50 credit appears only if you clear 800 kilowatt-hours. Free nights and weekends plans work the calendar the same way: the generosity lands precisely where it costs the company least.
The home Season Pass was built for
An honest answer: that home exists.
If your usage graph looks like a two-humped camel — electric heat blasting in January, AC pinned in August, almost nothing in between — a big share of your power lands in the 50% months. The lopsided calendar starts working in your favor instead of TXU’s, and the gap against a plain fixed plan narrows. For that home, the smoother winter and summer bills have real value. But look at what it took in our illustration: the swing home pushed 57% of its annual power into the four half-price months and still only earned a 36% discount off TXU’s own list price.
If your usage is steady year-round — gas heat, mild habits, an apartment — you’re the customer this plan profits from. You’ll pay the inflated shoulder rate on power you use evenly all year, and the four discount months won’t claw it back.
Either way, the deciding number isn’t the discount percentage. It’s the average price at your usage level on the pricing fact sheet, held next to a plain fixed-rate plan. Ten minutes of looking beats twelve months of finding out.
What to do instead
- Pull your last 12 months of usage. It’s in your online account or on any bill. You need the shape, not just the total — how big are your January and August compared to April?
- Compare total yearly cost at your usage, not discount headlines. See what every company charges — including TXU’s own plain fixed plans, which often beat their headline plans — on ComparePower.
- If it’s TXU against a cheaper company, start with TXU vs Gexa or TXU vs Frontier.
A plan with no seasonal fireworks usually costs less than one with a light show. Somebody buys the fireworks. On this plan, it’s you, in April.
Why this page exists
This page answers: “Is the TXU Season Pass — the 50%-off-peak-months plan — a good deal?”
It doesn’t answer: “What’s the cheapest plan in your ZIP code today?” Prices change weekly. For that, compare actual prices on ComparePower.