Texas Businesses Save with New Energy Plans

Electricity costs in Texas have climbed more than 30% since 2021. For a small business running 2,000 square feet of retail space or a professional office with 20 workstations, that's not a rounding error — it's a real hit to the bottom line. Until recently, the only way to fight back was to hire a broker, wade through a complex commercial contract, and hope you negotiated something reasonable.

Rhythm Energy is trying to change that.

The Houston-based retail electric provider — which sold over 660 gigawatt-hours of electricity to Texas customers in 2024, putting it firmly in the top tier of the state's competitive retail market — has launched its first commercial electricity offerings: the All-Business plan and the PowerShift Business plan. Both are built around simplicity and transparency, which sounds obvious until you consider how rare those qualities are in commercial energy contracts.

What Rhythm Is Actually Offering

The two plans serve different customer profiles, and the distinction matters.

All-Business is a straightforward fixed-rate plan — predictable monthly costs, no surprises. For businesses that operate around the clock or have irregular hours, price certainty has real value. You budget against a known number.

PowerShift Business is where things get interesting. It's a time-of-use (TOU) plan that charges a lower rate for 20 hours of the day, with a higher rate applied only between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. That four-hour window is precisely when Texas's grid is under peak demand pressure — and when wholesale electricity prices spike accordingly. For businesses that are dark or near-idle during those hours, the math works out significantly in their favor.

Both plans are available in 12-, 24-, and 36-month terms and come backed by 100% renewable electricity through Rhythm's purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from wind, solar, and other renewable producers. That's not a premium add-on; it's the baseline product.

Why Time-of-Use Pricing Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

TOU pricing isn't new. Utilities have used it for decades to manage grid load. What's new is making it accessible to small commercial customers without the complexity of a brokered contract.

Matthew Tolliver, Rhythm's head of product, put it plainly: businesses operating in typical white-collar or customer-facing environments that aren't active in the evening have an opportunity to cut their rates nearly in half.

Think about what that actually means for a beauty salon that closes at 7 p.m., a dental office that shuts down by 6, or a retail boutique with evening foot traffic that trails off before the peak window opens. These businesses consume the bulk of their electricity during operating hours — HVAC, lighting, equipment — and their consumption during the 6–10 p.m. peak period is minimal. Under a flat-rate plan, they're effectively subsidizing peak-hour users. Under PowerShift Business, they stop doing that.

The insider reality here: TOU pricing has long been available to large commercial and industrial customers who have the legal and procurement teams to negotiate it. Small businesses have historically been stuck with flat-rate products, not because TOU doesn't benefit them, but because no one bothered to build a simple version of it for them. Rhythm is filling that gap.

The Cost Pressure Behind the Timing

The 30% rise in Texas commercial electricity costs since 2021 isn't a quirk — it's a structural shift. Texas has added tens of millions of square feet of data center capacity, EV charging infrastructure is ramping up, and extreme summer heat events have become more frequent and intense. All of that drives peak demand higher, and peak demand drives prices up across the board.

For small businesses operating on thin margins, a 30% cost increase over five years can be the difference between profitability and breaking even. The cruel irony is that these businesses typically have the least leverage in the energy market — too small to negotiate custom contracts, too unsophisticated to navigate broker relationships, and too busy running operations to think strategically about electricity procurement.

That's the gap PowerShift Business is designed to fill. By making TOU pricing accessible through a simple, direct plan, Rhythm is giving small commercial customers the kind of tool that large corporations have had for years.

What's Coming Next: Battery Storage and Virtual Power Plants

The current plan launches are only part of Rhythm's commercial strategy. Tolliver confirmed the company is working to launch a battery-based virtual power plant (VPP) program in the second half of 2026, built around what he described as a "best-in-class" hardware partner.

VPPs are worth understanding because they represent a fundamental shift in how distributed energy resources get used. In a VPP, individual batteries — installed at customer sites — are aggregated and dispatched as a coordinated resource by the energy provider. During peak demand events, the provider can draw on that distributed storage to reduce grid stress, and customers benefit through enhanced resilience and financial incentives.

For Texas businesses, resilience carries a specific meaning after the February 2021 grid failure and subsequent extreme weather events. A battery that keeps your business running during an outage is worth real money — and if that battery also earns you credits through VPP participation, the economics improve further.

The combination of TOU pricing and battery storage represents a coherent long-term strategy: shift consumption away from peak hours, store energy when it's cheap, and participate in grid services when prices spike. Businesses that start with a PowerShift plan today are positioning themselves to layer in battery economics tomorrow.

The Competitive Picture in Texas

Texas's deregulated electricity market is unusually competitive, with dozens of retail electric providers fighting for customers. Rhythm's positioning — simple plans, transparent pricing, renewable backing — is a deliberate counter to the complexity that characterizes much of the commercial market.

The company, founded in 2020, has built its residential business to the point where it claims the title of largest independent green energy provider in America. Expanding that model to commercial customers is a logical next step, but it's not without risk. Commercial customers have more complex needs than residential ones, and the expectations around reliability, billing clarity, and customer service are higher.

What Rhythm has going for it is timing. Texas businesses are actively looking for ways to manage energy costs, the grid is evolving toward more variable pricing structures, and the infrastructure for distributed storage is maturing rapidly. The businesses that figure out how to align their operations with grid economics — rather than just accepting whatever rate they're given — will have a structural cost advantage over competitors that don't.

That advantage starts with something as simple as knowing when your peak hours are and choosing a plan that rewards you for not using power during them.

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