The Short Answer
Your Texas address may or may not qualify for retail electricity choice, and the answer depends entirely on which utility owns the wires running to your home. Texas opened most of its electricity market to competition in 2002 under Senate Bill 7, but the law explicitly excluded several large categories of utilities. If your home is served by one of those excluded utilities, no amount of plan shopping will change who sends your bill. Knowing which category applies to your address is the necessary first step before doing anything else.
Why Texas Is Not Fully Deregulated
The Texas deregulated market, overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), covers the ERCOT grid, which serves roughly 90 percent of the state's land area. However, grid coverage and retail competition are not the same thing. Three categories of utility were allowed to opt out of deregulation, and all three took that option.
Municipally owned utilities (MOUs) are electric systems owned and operated by city governments. Because they are political subdivisions of the state, the legislature gave them the right to stay outside the competitive market. The two largest are Austin Energy, which serves Austin and surrounding areas, and CPS Energy, which serves San Antonio and parts of Bexar County. Customers of Austin Energy or CPS Energy buy electricity on rates set by their city council, not by the open market.
Electric cooperatives are member-owned, nonprofit utilities that were built to bring electricity to rural Texas decades ago. Roughly 70 electric cooperatives operate in Texas today, according to the Texas Electric Cooperatives trade association. Like MOUs, cooperatives were excluded from mandatory deregulation. Some cooperatives have voluntarily opened limited competition to their members, but the vast majority have not. If a cooperative owns the meter on your property, you almost certainly cannot switch retail providers.
Utilities that straddle the ERCOT border present a third case. Oncor, AEP Texas, and CenterPoint are the major transmission and distribution utilities (TDUs) inside ERCOT, and their customers can choose retail providers. But small portions of far West Texas and the Panhandle fall under the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) or the Western Interconnection rather than ERCOT. Those areas are served by utilities such as El Paso Electric, which is regulated by the PUCT as a traditional vertically integrated utility, not as a competitive market.
The Specific Utilities That Are Not Deregulated
The following are the most commonly encountered non-deregulated utilities in Texas. This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers the majority of households who discover they cannot choose.
Austin Energy serves approximately 500,000 customers in Austin and some adjacent areas. Rates are set by Austin City Council. Customers cannot choose a different retail electric provider (REP).
CPS Energy serves approximately 900,000 electric customers in San Antonio and Bexar County. It is the largest municipally owned combined gas and electric utility in the United States, according to CPS Energy's own reporting. Rates are governed by the San Antonio City Council.
Garland Power and Light, Denton Municipal Electric, and Greenville Electric are smaller MOUs that follow the same opt-out structure. Customers in those cities buy from their city-owned system.
Pedernales Electric Cooperative, Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, and Oncor-adjacent co-ops serve large swaths of Central and South Texas outside Austin and San Antonio. Pedernales alone serves parts of eight counties. Membership in these cooperatives means standard competitive retail choice is not available.
El Paso Electric covers the El Paso metro and parts of far West Texas. It operates as a regulated, vertically integrated utility under PUCT oversight, meaning the commission sets its rates directly rather than allowing competitive retail providers to serve those customers.
How to Check Your Specific Address
The most reliable method is the PUCT's own address lookup tool, available at powertochoose.org, the state's official comparison site. Enter a full street address, and the site will either return available plans or tell you that your address is not in a competitive service area.
A secondary check: look at your current electricity bill. The name of the delivery company in the billing details will tell you who owns the wires. If it says Austin Energy, CPS Energy, or the name of a cooperative, you are in a non-deregulated area. If it says Oncor, AEP Texas Central, AEP Texas North, or CenterPoint Energy (Houston area), you are in a deregulated area and can shop freely.
For addresses that return no results on powertochoose.org, the PUCT maintains a utility service area map that shows which utility holds the certificate of convenience and necessity (CCN) for any given location. That map is searchable by county and coordinates.
What Deregulated Actually Means in Practice
In a deregulated area, the utility that owns the power lines, called the TDU, continues to maintain those lines and responds to outages. The TDU charge appears on every bill regardless of which retail provider a customer chooses. What changes is the energy supply portion of the bill: a licensed retail electric provider (REP) buys power on the wholesale market and sells it to the customer, competing on price and contract terms against dozens of other REPs.
As of August 8, 2026, plans listed on ChooseMyPower showed a range from 5.6 cents per kilowatt-hour all-in at 1,000 kWh (Just Energy, Smart Choice 12, lowest-cost utility area) to well above the median of 15.1 cents per kWh across 126 live plans from 18 providers. That spread exists only because competitive retail providers are bidding for customers in deregulated areas. Customers of Austin Energy or CPS Energy see none of that price competition; their rates move only when their city council votes to change them.
What To Do If Your Address Is Not Deregulated
Not being in a deregulated area does not leave a household without options entirely, but those options are different.
Customers of MOUs can often participate in their utility's own time-of-use rates, solar buyback programs, or budget billing plans. Austin Energy, for example, offers a value-based rate structure and net metering for rooftop solar. CPS Energy has demand response and efficiency rebate programs. These programs are worth reviewing even without competitive retail choice.
Cooperative members sometimes have a vote in co-op governance and can advocate for rate changes or renewable energy programs through their co-op's board elections. That is a slower mechanism than switching providers, but it is a real one.
For customers near the boundary of a non-deregulated service area, it is worth confirming that the boundary has not shifted. Service area certificates do occasionally get amended, and a property on the edge of a cooperative's territory might have had its designation updated.
A Common Point of Confusion
Some households in deregulated areas have never switched from their incumbent provider and may not realize competition is available to them. In the early years after deregulation, most customers defaulted to the competitive affiliate of the old integrated utility. These default plans, called Price to Beat or later standard offer rates, have largely been phased out, but many customers remained with their original provider out of inertia. Being in a deregulated area and choosing not to switch is a valid decision, but it should be a conscious one made after comparing available plans, not an assumption that there is no choice.
The distinction between having no choice (non-deregulated area) and simply not having exercised a choice (deregulated area with an incumbent provider) is one of the most practically important things a Texas electricity customer can understand.
The Bottom Line
Check the address first. Use powertochoose.org or the billing details on a current statement. If the address is in a deregulated area served by Oncor, AEP Texas, or CenterPoint, competitive retail plans are available and worth comparing. If the address is served by Austin Energy, CPS Energy, an electric cooperative, or El Paso Electric, retail competition does not apply, and the focus should shift to the programs and rate structures that utility does offer.