Pedernales Electric Co-op: Rates & Options 2026

Drive west out of Austin on US-290 toward Johnson City and the landscape opens up fast: cedar-covered hills, ranches, small towns spaced miles apart. That's PEC territory. Pedernales Electric Co-op was founded in 1938 to bring electricity to a rural Hill Country that investor-owned utilities considered too expensive to serve. Today it covers roughly 8,500 square miles across parts of Bastrop, Blanco, Burnet, Gillespie, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Lampasas, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, Menard, San Saba, Travis, and other counties.

The cooperative structure matters for your bill. PEC is a not-for-profit member-owned organization. When you connect service, you become a member and receive an ownership share. Margins above operating costs are returned as capital credits over time rather than paid to outside shareholders. That accountability runs through elected board members who live in the same territory you do.

Texas deregulated most of its electricity market in 2002, giving millions of customers the right to choose among competing Retail Electric Providers (REPs). The deregulated zone covers most of the state's major metro areas and is overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). Customers there shop on powertochoose.org and compare plans using the standardized Electricity Facts Label (EFL).

Cooperatives and municipally owned utilities were allowed to opt out of deregulation, and Pedernales Electric did exactly that. PEC is its own vertically integrated service provider inside its territory. It both delivers the wire infrastructure and sets the rates its members pay. No third-party REP can offer you a competing plan at your PEC-served address. If you want REP competition and live inside PEC's footprint, the realistic path is a physical move to a deregulated address, typically closer to Austin's urban core where Oncor or another transmission and distribution utility (TDU) serves the lines.

Because PEC is not regulated by the PUCT the way investor-owned utilities are, it sets its own rates through a board-approved process rather than a traditional rate case before state regulators. The board must balance fuel costs, infrastructure maintenance across a large rural footprint, storm hardening, and long-term debt service from building out lines that stretch across sparse terrain.

PEC's rate structure typically includes a base charge (a flat monthly fee regardless of consumption), an energy charge per kilowatt-hour, and any applicable riders for programs like renewable energy or demand response. The co-op also offers time-of-use options that reward members who shift usage away from peak hours. For the most current rate schedules, members should check pec.coop directly or call PEC member services, since rates are set internally and can change without the public docket process that PUCT-regulated utilities follow.

Note that ElectricRates.org tracks live rates for deregulated Texas addresses. Our Texas electricity rates page focuses on REP competition in the deregulated zones. PEC rates are not listed there because PEC is a closed-territory co-op with no competing offers.

For context, here is where the deregulated market sits right now. As of July 2026, in the Oncor territory serving the Dallas area, the lowest all-in advertised rate across roughly 132 active plans runs about 7.1 cents per kilowatt-hour at 1,000 kWh monthly usage. The median all-in rate in that market sits near 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour at the same usage level.

Those figures reflect the deregulated market where REPs compete aggressively for customers. A co-op like PEC operates under a different economic model: it is not trying to win customers from competitors, it is trying to cover costs for a geographically challenging service area while staying not-for-profit. Rural electric infrastructure per customer is more expensive to build and maintain than dense urban infrastructure, so direct per-kWh comparisons between PEC and an urban REP rate are not especially meaningful without knowing your actual usage tier and PEC's current schedule.

For precise PEC rates, visit pec.coop or contact member services. For live REP options in deregulated Texas zones, visit ElectricRates.org or powertochoose.org.

The Hill Country summers are punishing. A 2,000-square-foot home in Fredericksburg or Marble Falls can pull well over 2,000 kWh in July and August when temperatures sit above 100 degrees for weeks at a stretch. Winter ice storms, as the region learned in February 2021, can spike demand in the opposite direction.

In the deregulated Texas market, the PUCT requires that EFLs disclose all-in price per kWh at usage levels of 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh, specifically because the price per kWh often changes significantly across those tiers due to bill credits or demand charges. PEC is not required to publish an EFL in the same format, but smart members should ask PEC for the effective cost at their typical monthly usage before assuming any number they see elsewhere applies to their account.

PEC also offers budget billing that smooths out seasonal swings by averaging costs across twelve months. For members on fixed incomes or tight budgets, that predictability can matter more than chasing the lowest per-kWh rate.

Co-op membership comes with benefits that a typical REP relationship does not offer. A few worth understanding:

Capital Credits. PEC allocates margins back to members based on how much electricity each account used during a given year. When the board retires capital credits, members receive checks. The timeline varies, often spanning years, but it is real money tied to your membership.

Operation Round Up. Members can round up their bill to the nearest dollar, with the spare change going to a charitable trust that funds community programs across the service area.

Demand Response and Time-of-Use Programs. PEC has offered programs that reward members for reducing load during peak periods, including smart thermostat incentives and interruptible service options. These can meaningfully reduce annual costs for members who can shift usage.

Renewable Energy Options. PEC offers green pricing programs for members who want to support renewable generation. Check pec.coop for current availability and any premium associated with those options.

Distributed Generation (Solar). PEC has interconnection rules for members who install rooftop solar. The co-op's tariff for net metering or buyback rates affects how quickly a solar investment pencils out. Review PEC's current solar tariff before sizing a system.

PEC's service territory touches the western and northern edges of the Austin metro area. Some addresses in Hays County, Travis County, and surrounding areas sit near the boundary between PEC and a deregulated TDU such as Oncor or AEP Texas. In those edge cases, your actual provider depends on which utility holds the franchise for your specific address, not which county you live in.

If you are moving to the Hill Country region and want to confirm whether an address falls under PEC or a deregulated TDU, the most reliable check is to contact PEC directly or use the PUCT's powertochoose.org address lookup. Powertochoose will return available REP plans if the address is deregulated and nothing if it is not. That result alone tells you which system your address belongs to.

For deregulated addresses anywhere in Texas, ElectricRates.org compiles live plan data so you can compare REPs without manually reading a stack of EFLs. Visit our Texas electricity page for current rates by TDU territory.

Serving 8,500 square miles of Texas Hill Country means PEC faces reliability challenges that urban utilities do not. Cedar and oak trees, caliche roads for line crews, and dramatic weather ranging from summer wildfires to winter ice make maintenance expensive and restoration slow compared to densely packed urban grids.

PEC has invested significantly in grid hardening, automated switching, and vegetation management. The co-op publishes outage maps and restoration updates on its website and mobile app. Members in areas prone to longer outages, particularly deep rural accounts on long single-phase lines, often invest in backup generators or battery storage for peace of mind during major storms.

For reliability concerns or to report outages, PEC's direct member services line is the right contact. The PUCT does not have the same direct jurisdiction over PEC that it holds over investor-owned TDUs, so complaints about service quality are generally handled through PEC's own member resolution process or, in unresolved cases, through PEC's elected board.

Pedernales Electric Co-op is not a choice you make at a shopping website. It is the provider for your address, and your relationship with it is a membership, not a commodity transaction. That structure brings real benefits: capital credits, local board accountability, programs built for rural members, and a mission focused on the Hill Country rather than shareholder returns.

It also means the competitive REP market does not apply to you. The rates on powertochoose.org and the plans tracked by ElectricRates.org are for deregulated Texas addresses served by TDUs like Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas, and TNMP. If your address is firmly in PEC territory, the practical levers for managing your bill are PEC's own programs: time-of-use scheduling, budget billing, demand response participation, and, over the long term, efficiency improvements that reduce your kWh consumption at any rate.

For members who have questions about rates, contact PEC directly at pec.coop. For anyone comparing options in deregulated Texas, ElectricRates.org has live plan data by territory updated regularly.