Deregulation

deregulationTHE POWER OF CHOICE, WHEN ENERGY COMPANIES COMPETE YOU WIN™

Deregulation has made it possible for energy companies to compete for your business, breaking up the monopolies and generating lower prices and innovation for the consumer.

With deregulation, you can shop for and choose the retail electricity provider that’s right for your business. Retail Electricity Providers compete to sell electricity to you and are responsible for:

  • Selling electricity
  • Providing bills to customers
  • Handling customer service functions

Your local utility company, now commonly referred to as your local wires company, will not change if you decide to switch to a different Retail Electricity Provider. You and businesses near yours can have different retail electricity providers, but your local wires company will stay the same and will:

  • Remain a separate entity from your Retail Electricity Provider
  • Continue to deliver your power over the same poles and wires
  • Respond to outages and emergencies as always

If you decide to switch to a different Retail Electricity Provider, there’s no risk of losing power in the switching process. Your electricity will continue to flow to your business without interruption. Along with being risk-free, electricity deregulation offers many other benefits, including:

  • Lower prices
  • Innovative product and service offerings
  • Improved customer service

Senate Bill 7 passed on June 18, 1999 paved the way for deregulation in Texas. Deregulation took effect on January 1, 2002, allowing you to choose the company from which you wish to buy your electricity.

The company that maintains your power lines, and transformers, handles emergency and service issues will remain the same.  In this way, the Public Utility Commission protected the consumers, requiring that the TDSP (Transmission Distribution Service Provider) provide the same level of service to homes and businesses in their service area, regardless of where you buy your electricity. It is illegal for a TDSP to discriminate based upon who you buy your electricity from.  All customers in a geographic area receive the same service from the same TDSP.  The transmission and distribution of electricity was not deregulated.