Smart Meter Texas (smartmetertexas.com) is a free, state-mandated portal that shows any Texas household their hourly electricity consumption and the ESI ID number that identifies their meter, two pieces of information that directly affect how much they pay for power.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) requires transmission and distribution utilities (TDUs) to make this data available to customers at no charge. The portal is operated jointly by the state's major TDUs: Oncor, CenterPoint Energy, AEP Texas, and Texas-New Mexico Power (TNMP). If a home has a smart meter and falls within a deregulated service area, the data is almost certainly there.
What Smart Meter Texas Actually Shows
Once logged in, a customer sees their electricity consumption broken down by 15-minute or hourly intervals, depending on the meter type. The portal retains up to 24 months of historical data (PUCT Substantive Rule 25.130). That history is more useful than most customers realize.
Specific things the portal displays:
- Interval usage data. Kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed in each time block throughout the day
- Daily and monthly summaries. Total kWh by day, billing period, or custom date range
- On-peak versus off-peak usage. Relevant for customers on time-of-use (TOU) plans
- ESI ID. The 17- or 22-digit number that permanently identifies the meter at a specific address
The data updates with roughly a 24-hour lag. It is not a live feed, but it is recent enough to catch unusual spikes, verify a bill, or profile a home's load shape before shopping for a new plan.
How to Create a Smart Meter Texas Account
Creating an account takes about five minutes. Here are the steps:
- Go to smartmetertexas.com and click "Register."
- Enter the service address and the ESI ID for that address. (If the ESI ID is unknown, it appears on any electricity bill from the current retail electric provider, or it can be retrieved through the ESI ID lookup described in the next section.)
- Provide a valid email address and create a password.
- Agree to the terms of service and submit.
- A confirmation email arrives within a few minutes. Click the link to activate the account.
One account can hold multiple addresses. This is useful for households managing a rental property alongside their primary home.
How to Find Your ESI ID (ESID Lookup)
The ESI ID (also written ESID) is the Electric Service Identifier assigned to a specific meter location. It does not change when a customer switches retail electric providers. It is the address of the meter, not the account.
There are three reliable ways to find it:
Method 1. Check a current electricity bill. Every retail electric provider is required to print the ESI ID on customer invoices. It appears near the top of the bill, usually labeled "ESI ID" or "ESID." It is a string of 17 to 22 digits.
Method 2. Use the Smart Meter Texas portal directly. The registration screen includes an address lookup that returns the ESI ID without requiring an existing account. Enter the full service address and the portal will display the associated ESI ID if a smart meter is registered at that location.
Method 3. Call the TDU for the area. The TDU (not the retail provider) owns the meter. Oncor serves the Dallas-Fort Worth area, CenterPoint serves Houston, AEP Texas serves west and south Texas, and TNMP serves parts of north and west Texas. Any of these utilities can confirm the ESI ID by address over the phone.
The ESI ID is needed when signing up for a new retail electric provider, registering on Smart Meter Texas, or disputing a meter read.
How to Read the Usage Data
Once inside the portal, the default view shows the current month's daily consumption as a bar chart. Each bar represents one day's total kWh. Clicking on a single day expands it into an hourly (or 15-minute interval) breakdown.
A few practical ways to use this data:
Identify phantom loads. Look at the bars between midnight and 5 a.m., when no one is actively using appliances. If consumption is consistently above 0.5 kWh per hour during those hours, something is drawing significant power around the clock. Common culprits include old refrigerators, pool pumps set on incorrect schedules, and electric water heaters.
Verify a high bill. If a bill looks unexpectedly large, pull the interval data for that billing period and look for days where consumption spiked. A single day with an HVAC malfunction can add 30 to 50 kWh above a normal daily average, which at a blended rate of 12 to 14 cents per kWh (the Texas statewide average as of early 2025, per U.S. Energy Information Administration electricity sales data) translates to $3.60 to $7.00 in a single day.
Evaluate whether a time-of-use plan makes sense. Download the data as a CSV file (the portal supports this under "Export Data") and tally how much of total monthly consumption falls between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays, the peak window most TOU plans use for their higher rate. If that share is below 15 to 20 percent of total monthly usage, a TOU plan with a discounted off-peak rate often produces net savings.
Prepare before shopping for a new plan. The Electricity Facts Label (EFL) for every retail plan in Texas lists the estimated price at 500 kWh, 1,000 kWh, and 2,000 kWh per month. Knowing actual consumption from Smart Meter Texas tells a shopper which column on the EFL actually applies to their household.
When Smart Meter Texas Will Not Have Data
The portal only works for addresses within deregulated service territories that have a smart (advanced) meter installed. The PUCT reports that roughly 8 million smart meters have been deployed across Texas, covering the vast majority of residential accounts in deregulated areas. However, there are situations where data may be absent or incomplete:
- The meter was recently replaced and has not yet been registered in the system.
- The address is in a municipally owned utility territory (such as Austin Energy or San Antonio's CPS Energy), which are not deregulated and do not participate in the Smart Meter Texas system.
- The meter is an older, non-communicating meter that has not yet been upgraded.
If the portal returns no data for a valid address, the best next step is to call the local TDU directly to confirm whether a smart meter is installed.
A Note on Privacy
Some customers are cautious about interval data because it can reveal behavioral patterns, such as when a household wakes up, whether anyone is home during the day, and similar details. Smart Meter Texas requires account authentication before displaying any data. A landlord cannot access a tenant's usage data without the tenant's login credentials. The PUCT's privacy rules (Substantive Rule 25.130) restrict how TDUs and retail providers may share or sell interval data without explicit customer consent.
Customers who prefer not to have interval data stored can contact their TDU to request a standard, non-communicating meter. That request is within a customer's rights under PUCT rules, though it may involve a fee and will eliminate access to the Smart Meter Texas portal and any time-of-use plan options.
The Bottom Line
Smart Meter Texas is one of the most underused tools available to Texas electricity customers. The ESI ID lookup resolves one of the most common friction points when switching providers. The interval usage data turns abstract kilowatt-hour numbers on a bill into a specific picture of how and when a household uses electricity. Both are free, both are accessible within minutes, and both make it easier to choose a plan that fits actual usage rather than an estimate.