Texas

TDU delivery charges, read from the filed tariffs

What are TDU delivery charges?

TDU delivery charges are what the utility that owns the poles and wires bills to carry electricity to your premises, passed through on your retailer’s bill. They are set by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, not by your retailer, and no amount of switching changes them.

In deregulated Texas your bill covers two jobs done by two companies. A retail electric provider — your REP — sells you the electricity and sends the bill. A transmission and distribution utility owns the poles, wires and meter, and delivers it. The delivery half appears on your REP’s bill as TDU or TDSP charges, passed straight through.

The two acronyms mean the same thing. TDSP — transmission and distribution service provider — is the term the tariffs use; TDU is the shorter form that appears on most bills. Either way it is the regulated half: your TDU is assigned by geography, its rates are approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and no amount of shopping changes them.

This is why switching REPs can leave a high bill almost unmoved. A quote replaces the energy line only. If the increase came from the TDU side, every quote you collect leaves it exactly where it is.

The four TDUs, and which one is yours

Four operate in the deregulated parts of the state. You do not choose between them — the address decides. Your TDU is named on your bill, usually next to the delivery charges.

Municipal utilities and electric cooperatives — Austin Energy, CPS Energy in San Antonio, and the co-ops — sit outside the deregulated market altogether. They deliver and sell power, there is no separate TDU charge, and there is no retailer to switch.

The two we price

Both utilities file a “Tariff for Retail Delivery Service” with the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Same regulator, same document title, and almost nothing else in common once you read past the first page.

A 100-unit account pays about $489 a month in distribution under CenterPoint, and between $693 and $983 under Oncor depending on its load factor. That is not a verdict on which utility is cheaper — kW and kVA are different quantities, and no business gets to choose between them anyway. It is a measure of how far apart the rules are.

The practical consequence: advice derived from one tariff does not transfer to the other. “Watch your load factor” is central in Dallas and irrelevant in Houston. “Check your power factor” is the reverse.

One rule they do share

Cross the threshold once — 10 kW at Oncor, 10 kVA at CenterPoint — and the account stays on the expensive class for at least 12 months. Both tariffs say so independently, in almost the same words, which makes it a Texas rule rather than a quirk of either company. One busy month costs a year.

Coverage

We would rather name what we have not read than imply coverage we do not have.

• ✓Oncor Electric Delivery — Tariff for Retail Delivery Service read in full, effective June 1, 2026.
• ✓CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric — Tariff for Retail Delivery Service read in full, revision 23, effective February 26, 2026.
• —AEP Texas — Tariff not yet extracted.
• —Texas-New Mexico Power — Tariff not yet extracted.

Pages

• Oncor delivery charges

  The 2026 rates, and the three rules in the filed tariff that decide a commercial bill: load-factor banding, sticky class assignment, and the 80% ratchet that penalises improving your load profile.

• CenterPoint delivery charges

  Houston. Why the bill is denominated in kVA rather than kW, what a poor power factor costs, and the meter assignment that moves the fixed charge by a factor of eleven.

• What a delivery charge is

  The national explainer. What each line on the delivery half pays for, why no supplier can change it, and how the billing basis changes above 10 kW.

Sources: Oncor Tariff for Retail Delivery Service, §6.1.1.1, effective June 1, 2026; CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric Tariff for Retail Delivery Service, §6.1.1.1, revision 23, effective February 26, 2026.