Texas Power Outage: What to Do and Who to Call

A summer storm knocks out power to a Dallas neighborhood at 9 p.m. Half the block grabs their electricity bill and dials the customer service number printed on it. That number rings a Retail Electric Provider, a company that sells electricity plans but owns zero miles of wire. The REP agent listens politely, then redirects the caller to Oncor.

This confusion costs time, and in Texas heat that time matters. Understanding the two-company structure of the state's competitive electricity market is the single most useful thing a Texas resident can know before an outage happens.

Texas deregulated most of its electricity market, which split one utility function into two separate roles.

Retail Electric Providers (REPs) compete for your business. They set rates, design plans, issue your monthly bill, and handle billing disputes. Companies like TXU Energy, Reliant, Green Mountain, and dozens of others are REPs.

Transmission and Distribution Utilities (TDUs) own and maintain the physical grid: the poles, transformers, and lines that carry electricity to your home. There are four TDUs in the deregulated Texas market:

- Oncor, Dallas-Fort Worth and surrounding areas
- CenterPoint Energy, Greater Houston
- AEP Texas, South and West Texas
- TNMP (Texas-New Mexico Power), Smaller service areas including parts of the Gulf Coast and West Texas

When power goes out, the TDU is the only company with crews and equipment to restore it. Your REP has no role in outage response whatsoever. Every electricity plan in Texas includes TDU delivery fees as a pass-through charge on your bill, which is why restoration service follows your address, not your plan.

Find your TDU by your address and use one of these channels.

Oncor (Dallas-Fort Worth region): Report at oncor.com/outages or call 1-888-313-4747.

CenterPoint Energy (Houston region): Report at centerpointenergy.com or call 1-800-332-7143.

AEP Texas (South and West Texas): Report at aeptexas.com/outage or call 1-866-223-8508.

TNMP: Report at tnmp.com/outages or call 1-888-866-7456.

All four TDUs also accept outage reports by text. Enroll your mobile number on the TDU's website in advance so that during an outage you can text a keyword and receive estimated restoration times without waiting on hold.

Each TDU maintains a live outage map that lets you search by zip code, address, or county. These maps update frequently during major events and show the number of customers affected, the suspected cause, and estimated restoration time.

For the most granular view, use your TDU's map directly rather than a third-party aggregator. During widespread weather events, third-party maps can lag official data by an hour or more. Bookmark your TDU's outage page now, before you ever need it, because searching for it on a phone with 12 percent battery during a thunderstorm is harder than it sounds.

If you are unsure which TDU serves your address, the Power to Choose site run by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) lets you enter a zip code to see which TDU territory you fall under, alongside available REP plans.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas sets reliability and service rules that TDUs must follow. A few that directly affect residential customers:

Critical Care and Chronic Condition designations. Customers who depend on life-sustaining equipment can apply for Critical Care status through their REP. The PUCT rules give Critical Care customers added protections, including priority notification during planned outages. Contact your REP to begin the application; the TDU ultimately grants the designation.

Outage restoration priority. TDUs restore transmission lines first, then distribution lines, then individual services. Hospitals and emergency services take precedence. Residential customers on the same feeder line are typically restored together.

Complaint process. If you believe your TDU mishandled your outage or restoration, you can file a complaint directly with the PUCT at puc.texas.gov. The PUCT does not handle billing disputes (those go through your REP), but it does oversee TDU service quality.

Provider of Last Resort (POLR). If your REP goes out of business, the PUCT designates a Provider of Last Resort to keep your power on temporarily. This is an emergency backstop, not a permanent plan, and POLR rates are typically higher than market rates. If this happens, use powertochoose.org to find a new REP quickly.

Texas outages cluster around predictable threats: summer heat driving peak demand, Gulf Coast hurricanes, and winter freezes. The 2021 winter storm reshaped how the state thinks about grid preparedness, and weatherization requirements for generators have since been updated under PUCT oversight.

A few practical steps that cost nothing:

Save your TDU's outage number in your phone contacts today. Know the difference between a planned outage (your TDU will notify you in advance) and an unplanned one.

Sign up for outage alerts through your TDU's website. Most send texts and emails when an outage is detected at your address and again when restoration is complete.

Keep a battery-powered or hand-crank radio. During widespread grid events, cell networks can become congested, and local radio stations carry emergency broadcasts from the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

For extended outages, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission maintains a list of warming and cooling centers by county during declared emergencies. Your county's Office of Emergency Management website is the fastest way to find the nearest open location.

An outage is a natural pause to ask whether your current electricity plan still makes sense. Texas has one of the most competitive retail electricity markets in the country. As of August 2026, the lowest all-in advertised rate in the Oncor territory (Dallas area, at 1,000 kWh monthly usage) is around 7.1 cents per kWh, while the median across active plans sits near 15.9 cents per kWh. That spread is wide enough to matter on a monthly bill.

Every plan sold in Texas comes with an Electricity Facts Label (EFL), a standardized one-page document required by the PUCT. The EFL shows the all-in rate at three usage tiers (500, 1,000, and 2,000 kWh) so you can compare plans honestly. TDU delivery fees are baked into those numbers, meaning they appear on every plan regardless of which REP you choose.

To shop plans by zip code and compare EFLs side by side, visit powertochoose.org or check live rates on ElectricRates.org's Texas page. Rates vary by TDU territory and change frequently, so pulling a current comparison before signing anything is worth the few minutes it takes.

One entity that does not appear on your bill but runs the grid behind the scenes is ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT operates the wholesale electricity market and manages the flow of power across most of the state. When demand spikes or generation falls short, ERCOT can call for conservation or, in extreme cases, authorize controlled outages to protect the broader grid.

ERCOT does not interact with residential customers directly. You cannot call ERCOT to report an outage or dispute a charge. Its role is wholesale coordination; your TDU is the one executing any controlled outage instructions at the distribution level and communicating with your neighborhood.

During a grid emergency, ERCOT posts alerts at ercot.com and the PUCT posts regulatory updates at puc.texas.gov. Monitoring both during a major weather event gives a fuller picture of how long a widespread outage might last.

Power out in Texas? Call your TDU, not your REP. Find your TDU by zip code using the outage maps linked above or through ElectricRates.org's Texas resource page. Save the number before you need it.

Once power is restored, take five minutes to pull up your current plan's EFL and compare it against live market rates. The competitive Texas market means a better deal is often one zip-code search away, and the PUCT's Power to Choose site at powertochoose.org makes that comparison free and straightforward.