Concerned About Your Winter Gas Bill? This Text Service Could Help

Last winter many of us were hit by high gas bills. So this year, SoCalGas is starting a new service to warn you if costs are going to jump.

The utility is launching a text-messaging service that will notify you when there is a 20% or more increase to the natural gas commodity charge, which makes up a portion of your bill.

What does ‘natural gas commodity charge’ mean?

In order to get natural gas, which is composed primarily of methane, into your home to work your stoves and water heaters, the utility has to purchase that gas and transport it to you.

While SoCalGas does not set that purchase price, the cost gets passed on to you through the natural gas commodity charge. There’s no markup.

That procurement makes up a chunk of your bill. The latest portion makes up 34% of December 2023 rates, according to SoCalGas, but that cost can vary throughout the year. Rates are updated monthly through advice letters, as approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

The charge shows up on your utility bill through cost per therm, which is how gas consumption is measured. SoCalGas says the procurement rate is about 47% lower than December 2022.

“Prices are influenced a lot by weather,” says Don Widjaja, vice president of customer solutions. “Storage is another function that we look at, and we are full.”

Current projections show that Southern California is heading toward a warmer winter with El Niño, which decreases gas consumption compared to last year. SoCalGas’ winter reliability is also considered “favorable,” according to CPUC.

How the texts work

The opt-in text service Natural Gas Price Notice is available from now through March. Widjaja says this is the first time they’ve offered text message alerts about significant price increases, spurred in part by the spikes earlier this year.

“I think a lot of people were caught off guard [with those rates]. We learned a lot from that and we don’t want that to happen again this winter season,” he said. “We thought that text messages is the right way to go because everybody has their phone.”

Widjaja says 20% was picked as a “good threshold” to get enough attention from customers to help them take action. The utility, he added, is focusing on the gas commodity price because it’s a market-driven cost that makes up a sizable portion of bills.

If prices don’t reach that threshold, then you’ll never get a text.

More than 35,000 customers have already signed up for the service, according to spokesperson Brian Haas, but that’s low compared to SoCalGas’s over 20 million customers. The utility is sending out mailers in Spanish and English to get the word out.

To sign up for the text service, go to SoCalGas’ website.

Other ways to save on your gas bill

The Natural Gas Price Notice service only lets you know about changes to a portion of your bill.

If you’re looking for more ways to be prepared, SoCalGas has weekly bill tracker alerts and assistance programs, like Level Pay Plan, to help you get through higher costs.