In Texas, heat protections skip city utilities as summer power shutoffs vary wildly

When extreme heat bears down on Texas, keeping the electricity on can quickly become a matter of health and safety. But whether a household is shielded from a shutoff may depend less on the temperature outside and more on which utility provides its power.

A stark example came in July 2024: Georgetown's city utility reported roughly 2 residential shutoffs for every 10,000 accounts, while Garland's municipal utility reported 250.

Here's what to know

According to the Texas Observer, Texas rules prevent many retail electric providers from disconnecting service for nonpayment during a National Weather Service heat advisory and for the following two days. But those protections apply only to ERCOT retail providers, not to municipal utilities or electric cooperatives, leaving Texans with city-owned service under a different set of rules.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's April data release made that gap easier to measure. Texas posted more than 3 million residential electricity shutoff events in 2024, the most of any state. Because the figures count shutoff events rather than households, a single account can show up more than once in a year.

City-owned utilities showed especially wide variation. Compared with each utility's average monthly shutoff rate from March through May, midsummer disconnections fell 98% in Georgetown and 94% at San Antonio's CPS Energy. Garland's rate dropped only 17%, while shutoffs rose 14% in Bryan and 62% in Castroville.

More background

Losing electricity during or after extreme heat can put people at risk, especially anyone who depends on refrigeration for food or medicine.

Michael Depland, communications director of Texas Housers, said, "Even if utility disconnects occur after the peak summer heat, they can result in inadequate or dangerous indoor temperatures."

Another metric in the federal survey was the final notice that utilities send before a shutoff. Final-notice rates at Texas municipal utilities increased by about 10% from spring to midsummer even as disconnection rates fell 66%, suggesting some companies may have delayed shutoffs rather than reduced pressure on customers behind on bills.

Jonathan Kim, research and communications manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, said that pattern "undermines the 'low bill' hypothesis somewhat."

David Konisky, co-director of the Energy Justice Lab, said, "One consequence of this patchwork of policies is a lack of clarity for customers."

What can be done?

Not all protections come from state requirements. CPS Energy, for example, has a written policy saying it will not disconnect residential service during an extreme weather emergency and will suspend shutoffs during a heat advisory and for the next two calendar days. But municipally owned utilities are not required statewide to offer those safeguards.

Karen Lusson, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said lawmakers should make broader protections mandatory by requiring all utilities, including cooperatives and municipal systems, to follow both temperature-based and calendar-based shutoff bans.

Lusson also said public utility commissions could press nonregulated utilities to match the protections imposed on retail providers.

Lusson said, "Public utility commissions can send letters to these non-regulated entities and encourage them to abide by the same rules as regulated public utilities."

Sanya Carley, co-director of the Energy Justice Lab, said, "Disconnections tend to be lower in the summer months, when heat-based utility disconnection protections are in place, and higher in the fall months, after disconnection protections are removed."

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